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VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS 


■u;3! 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY 

OF  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  ARTS  AND  LITERATURE 

IN  CANDIDACY  FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF 

DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


NJ" 


:.:;*: 


^ii^' 


BY 

HENRY 'WALDGRAVE  STUART 


Private  Edition,  Distributed  By 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  LIBRARIES 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 


Reprinted  from 
Studies  in  Logicax  Theory,  by  John  Dewey 


Ube  Tflnipersitp  ot  Cbicaao 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY 

OF  THE   GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF   ARTS   AND  LITERATURE 

IN   CANDIDACY  FOR  THE  DEGREE   OF 

DOCTOR   OF  PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


BY 

HENRY  WALDGRAVE  STUART 


.        J       '    J   '       '  >      ,    '        '  '     >  >„         1  *,  )       >      3  .  J 


Private  Edition,  Distributed  By 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  LIBRARIES 

CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 


Reprinted  from 
Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  by  John  Dewey 


Copyright  1918  By 
The  University  of  Chicago 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Published  May  191 8 


Composed  and  Printed  By 

The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

Chicago,  Illinois,  U.S.A. 


X 

VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS 

The  purpose  of  this  discussion  is  to  supply  the  main  out- 
lines of  a  theory  of  value  based  upon  analysis  of  the  valua- 
tion-process from  the  logical  point  of  view.  The  general 
principle  which  we  shall  seek  to  establish  is  that  judgments 
of  value,  whether  passed  upon  things  or  upon  modes  of 
conduct,  are  essentially  objective  in  import,  and  that  they 
are  reached  through  a  process  of  valuation  which  is  essen- 
tially of  the  same  logical  character  as  the  judgment-process 
whereby  conclusions  of  physical  fact  are  established — 
in  a  word,  that  the  valuation-process,  issuing  in  the  finished 
judgment  of  value  expressive  of  the  judging  person's  defini- 
tive attitude  toward  the  thing  in  question,  is  constructive  of 
an  order  of  reality  in  the  same  sense  as,  in  current  theories 
of  knowledge,  is  the  judgment  of  sense-perception  and  sci- 
ence. Our  method  of  procedure  to  this  end  will  be  that  of 
assuming,  and  adhering  to  as  consistently  as  possible,  the 
standpoint  of  the  individual  in  the  process  of  deliberating 
upon  an  ethical  or  economic  problem  (for,  as  we  shall  hold, 
all  values  properly  so  called  are  either  ethical  or  economic), 
and  of  ascertaining,  as  accurately  as  may  be,  the  meaning  of 
the  deliberative  or  evaluating  process  and  of  the  various  fac- 
tors in  it  as  these  are  presented  in  the  individual's  apprehen- 
sion. It  is  in  this  sense  that  our  procedure  will  be  logical 
rather  than  psychological.  We  shall  be  concerned  to  deter- 
mine the  meaning  of  the  object  of  valuation  as  object,  of  the 
standard  of  value  as  standard,  and  of  the  valued  object  as 
valued,  in  terms  of  the  individual's  own  apprehension  of 
these,  rather  than  to  ascertain  the  nature  and  conditions  of 
his  apprehensions  of  these  considered  as  psychical  events. 

227 


40594y 


228  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

Our  attention  will  throughout  be  directed  to  these  factors 
or  phases  of  the  valuation-process  in  their  functional  aspect 
of  determinants  of  the  valuing  agent's  practical  attitude,  and 
never,  excepting  for  purposes  of  incidental  illustration  and 
in  a  very  general  and  tentative  way,  as  events  in  conscious- 
ness mediated  by  more  "elementary"  psychical  processes. 
The  results  which  we  shall  gain  by  adhering  to  this  method 
will  enable  us  to  see  not  merely  that  our  judgments  of  value 
are  in  function  and  meaning  objective,  but  also  that  our 
judgments  of  sense-perception  and  science  are,  as  such, 
capable  of  satisfactory  interpretation  only  as  being  incidental 
to  the  attainment  and  progressive  reconstruction  of  judg- 
ments of  value. 

The  first  three  main  divisions  will  be  given  over  to  estab- 
lishing the  objectivity  of  content  and  function  of  judgments 
of  value.  The  fourth  division  will  present  a  detailed  analy- 
sis of  the  two  types  of  judgment  of  value,  the  ethical  and 
economic,  defining  them  and  relating  them  to  each  other, 
and  correlating  them  in  the  manner  just  suggested  with 
judgment  of  the  physical  type.  After  considering,  in  the 
fifth  part,  certain  general  objections  to  the  positions  thus 
stated,  we  shall  proceed  in  the  sixth  and  concluding  division 
to  define  the  function  of  the  consciousness  of  value  in  the 
economy  of  life.' 

I 

The  system  of  judgments  which  defines  what  one  calls 
the  objective  order  of  things  is  inevitably  unique  for  each 
particular  individual.  No  two  men  can  view  the  world  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  same  theoretical  and  practical  inter- 

1  Considerations  of  space  as  well  as  circumstances  attending  the  immediate 
preparation  of  this  discussion  for  the  press  have  precluded  any  but  the  most  general 
and  casual  reference  to  the  recent  literature  of  the  subject.  Much  of  this  literature 
only  imperfectly  distinguishes  the  logical  and  psychological  points  of  view,  so  that 
critical  reference  to  it,  unaccompanied  by  detailed  restatement  and  analysis  of  the 
positions  criticised,  would  be  useless. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Pkocess  229 

ests,  nor  can  any  two  proceed  in  the  work  of  gaining  for 
themselves  knowledge  of  the  world  with  precisely  equal 
degrees  of  skill  and  accuracy.  Each  must  be  prompted  and 
guided,  in  the  construction  of  his  knowledge  of  single  things 
and  of  the  system  in  which  they  have  their  being,  by  his 
own  particular  interests  and  aims ;  and  even  when  one  per- 
son in  a  measure  shares  in  the  interests  and  aims  of  another, 
the  rate  and  manner  of  procedure  will  not  be  the  same  for 
both,  nor  will  the  knowledge  gained  be  for  both  equally 
systematic  in  arrangement  or  in  interrelation  of  its  parts. 
Each  man  lives  in  a  world  of  his  own — a  world,  indeed, 
identical  in  certain  fundamental  respects  with  the  worlds 
which  his  fellow-men  have  constructed  for  themselves,  but 
one  nevertheless  necessarily  unique  through  and  through 
because  each  man  is  a  unique  individual.  There  is,  doubt- 
less, a  "social  currency"  of  objects  which  implies  a  certain 
identity  of  meaning  in  objects  as  experienced  by  different 
individuals.  The  existence  of  society  presupposes,  and  its 
evolution  in  turn  develops  and  extends,  a  system  of  generally 
accepted  objects  and  relations.  Nevertheless,  the  "  socially 
current  object "  is,  as  such,  an  abstraction  just  as  the  uniform 
social  individual  is  likewise  an  abstraction.  The  only  con- 
crete object  ever  actually  known  or  in  any  wise  experienced 
by  any  person  is  the  object  as  constructed  by  that  person  in 
accordance  with  his  own  aims  and  purposes,  and  in  which 
there  is,  therefore,  a  large  and  important  share  of  meaning 
which  is  significant  to  no  one  else. 

It  is  needless  in  this  discussion  to  dwell  at  length  upon 
the  general  principle  of  recent  "functional"  psychology,  that 
practical  ends  are  the  controlling  factors  in  the  acquisition 
of  our  knowledge  of  objective  things.  We  shall  take  for 
granted  the  truth  of  the  general  proposition  that  cognition, 
in  whatever  sphere  of  science  or  of  practical  life,  is  essen- 
tially teleological  in  the  sense  of  being  incidental  always, 


230  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

more  or  less  directly,  to  the  attainment  of  ends.  Cognition, 
as  the  apperceptive  or  attentive  process,  is  essentially  the 
process  of  scrutinizing  a  situation  (whether  theoretical  or 
practical)  with  a  view  to  determining  the  availability  for  one's 
intended  purpose  of  such  objects  and  conditions  as  the 
situation  may  present.  The  objects  and  conditions  thus 
determined  will  be  made  use  of  or  ignored,  counted  upon  as 
advantageous  or  guarded  against  as  unfavorable — in  a  word, 
responded  to — in  ways  suggested  by  their  character  as 
ascertained  through  reference  to  the  interest  in  question. 
In  this  sense,  then,  objective  things  as  known  by  individual 
persons  are  essentially  complex  stimuli  whose  proper  func- 
tion and  reason  for  being  it  is  to  elicit  useful  responses  in 
the  way  of  conduct — responses  conducive  to  the  realization 
of  ends. 

From  this  point  of  view,  then,  the  difference  between  one 
person's  knowledge  of  a  particular  object  and  another's 
signifies  (1)  a  difference  between  these  persons'  original 
purposes  in  setting  out  to  gain  knowledge  of  the  object,  and 
(2)  consequently  a  difference  between  their  present  ways 
of  acting  with  reference  to  the  object.  The  bare  object  as 
socially  current  is,  at  best,  for  each  individual  simply  a  ground 
upon  which  subsequent  construction  may  be  made;  and  the 
subsequent  construction  which  each  individual  is  prompted 
by  his  circumstances  and  is  able  to  work  out  in  judgment 
first  makes  the  object,  for  this  individual,  real  and  for  his 
purposes  complete. 

Now,  it  is  our  primary  intention  to  show  that  objects  are, 
in  cases  of  a  certain  important  class,  not  yet  ready  to  serve 
the  person  who  knows  them  in  their  proper  character  of 
•^  stimuli,  when  they  have  been,  even  exhaustively,  defined  in 
merely  physical  terms.  It  is  very  often  not  enough  that  the 
dimensions  of  an  object  and  its  physical  properties,  even  the 
more  recondite  ones  as  well  as  those  more  commonly  under- 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  231 

stood  —  it  is  often  not  enough  for  the  purposes  of  an  agent 
that  these  characters  should  make  up  the  whole  sum  of  his 
knowledge  of  the  object  in  question.  A  measure  of  knowl- 
edge in  terms  of  physical  categories  is  often  only  a  begin- 
ning— the  result  of  a  preliminary  stage  of  the  entire  process 
of  teleological  determination,  which  must  be  carried  through 
before  the  object  of  attention  can  be  satisfactorily  known. 
In  the  present  study  of  the  logic  of  valuation  we  shall  be 
occupied  exclusively  with  the  discussion  of  cases  of  this  kind. 
In  our  judgments  of  sense-perception  and  physical  science 
we  have  presented  to  us  material  objects  in  their  physical 
aspect.  When  these  latter  are  inadequate  to  suggest  or  war- 
rant overt  conduct,  our  knowledge  of  them  must  be  supple- 
mented and  reconstructed  in  ways  presently  to  be  specified. 
It  is  in  the  outcome  of  judgment-processes  in  which  this 
work  of  supplementing  and  reconstructing  is  carried  through 
that  the  consciousness  of  value,  in  the  proper  sense,  arises, 
and  these  processes,  then,  are  those  which  we  shall  here  con- 
sider under  the  name  of  "processes  of  valuation."  They  will 
therefore  best  be  approached  through  specification  of  the 
ways  in  which  our  physical  judgments  may  be  inadequate. 

Let  us,  then,  assume,  as  has  been  indicated,  that  the  pro- 
cess of  acquiring  knowledge  —  that  is  to  say,  the  process  of 
judgment  or  attention — is  in  every  case  of  its  occurrence 
incidental  to  the  attainment  of  an  end.  We  must  make  this 
assumption  without  attempting  formally  to  justify  it — though 
in  the  course  of  our  discussion  it  will  be  abundantly  illus- 
trated. Let  us,  in  accordance  with  this  view,  think  of  the 
typical  judgment-process  as  proceeding,  in  the  main,  as  fol- 
lows: First  of  all  must  come  a  sense  of  need  or  deficiency, 
which  may,  on  occasion,  be  preceded  by  a  more  or  less  violent 
and  sudden  shock  to  the  senses,  forcibly  turning  one's  atten- 
tion to  the  need  of  immediate  action.  By  degrees  this  sense 
of  need  will  grow  more  definite  and  come  to  express  itself  in^ 


232  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

a  more  or  less  "clear  and  distinct"  image  of  an  end,  toward 
which  end  the  agent  is  drawn  by  desire  and  to  which  he 
looks  with  much  or  little  of  emotion.  The  emergence  of 
the  end  into  consciousness  immediately  makes  possible  and 
occasions  definite  analysis  of  the  situation  in  which  the  end 
must  be  worked  out.  Salient  features  of  the  situation  forth- 
with are  noticed — whether  useful  things  or  favoring  condi- 
tions, or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  absence  of  any  such.  Thus 
predicates  and  then  subjects  for  many  subsidiary  judgments 
in  the  comprehensive  judgment-process  emerge  together  in 
action  and  interaction  upon  each  other.  The  predicates, 
developed  out  of  the  general  end  toward  which  the  agent 
strives,  aflPord  successive  points  of  view  for  fresh  analyses  of 
the  situation.  The  logical  subjects  thus  discovered — objects 
of  attention  and  knowledge — require,  on  the  other  hand,  as 
they  are  scrutinized  and  judged,  modification  and  re-exami- 
nation of  the  end.  The  end  grows  clearer  and  fuller  of 
detail  as  the  predicates  or  implied  ("  constituent ")  ideas 
which  are  developed  out  of  it  are  distinguished  from  each 
other  and  used  in  making  one's  inventory  of  the  objective 
situation.  Conversely,  the  situation  loses  its  first  aspect  of 
confusion  and  takes  on  more  and  more  the  aspect  of  an 
orderly  assemblage  of  objects  and  conditions,  useful,  indif- 
ferent, and  adverse,  by  means  of  which  the  end  may  in 
greater  or  less  measure  be  attained  or  must,  in  however 
greatly  modified  a  form,  be  defeated.  Now,  in  this  develop- 
ment of  the  judgment-process,  it  must  be  observed,  the  end 
must  be  more  or  less  clearly  and  consistently  conceived 
throughout  as  an  activity,  if  the  objective  means  of  action 
which  have  been  determined  in  the  process  are  not  to  be,  at  the 
last,  separate  and  unrelated  data  still  requiring  co-ordination. 
If  the  end  has  been  so  conceived,  the  means  will  inevitably  be 
known  as  members  of  a  mechanical  system,  since  the  predi- 
cates by  which  they   have  been  determined  have   at  every 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  233 

point  involved  this  factor  of  amenability  to  co-ordination. 
The  judgment-process,  if  properly  conducted  and  brought  to 
a  conclusion,  must  issue  at  the  end  in  the  functional  unity  of 
a  finished  plan  of  conduct  with  a  perfected  mechanical 
co-ordination  of  the  available  means. 

We  have  now  to  see  that  much  more  may  be  involved  in  • 
such  a  process  as  this  than  has  been  explicitly  stated  in  our 
brief  analysis.  For  the  end  itself  may  be  a  matter  of  delib- 
eration, just  as  must  be  the  physical  means  of  accomplishing 
it;  and,  again,  the  means  may  call  for  scrutiny  and  deter-  v-' 
mination  from  other  points  of  view  than  the  physical  and 
mechanical.  The  final  action  taken  at  the  end  may  express 
the  outcome  of  deliberate  ethical  and  economic  judgment 
as  well  as  of  judgments  in  the  sphere  of  sense-perception 
and  physical  science.  Let  us  consider,  for  example,  that 
one's  end  is  the  construction  of  a  house  upon  a  certain  plot 
of  ground.  This  end  expresses  the  felt  need  of  a  more  com- 
fortable or  more  reputable  abode,  and  has  so  much  of  gen- 
eral presumption  in  its  favor.  There  may,  however,  be 
many  reasons  for  hesitation.  The  cost  in  time  or  money  or 
materials  on  hand  may  tax  one's  resources  and  injuriously 
curtail  one's  activities  along  other  lines.  And  there  may  be 
ethical  reasons  why  the  plan  should  not  be  carried  out.  The 
house  may  shut  off  a  pleasing  prospect  from  the  view  of  the 
entire  neighborhood  and  serve  no  better  end  than  the  grati- 
fication of  its  owner's  selfish  vanity.  It  will  cost  a  sum  of 
money  which  might  be  used  in  paying  just,  though  outlawed 
debts. 

Now,  from  the  standpoint  of  such  problems  as  these  the  </ 
fullest  possible  preliminary  knowledge  of  the  physical  and 
mechanical  fitness  of  our  means  must  still  be  very  abstract 
and  general.  It  would  be  of  use  in  any  undertaking  like  the 
one  we  have  supposed,  but  it  is  not  sufficient  in  so  far  as  the 
problem  is  one's  own  problem,  concrete,  particular,  and   so 


234  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

unique.  One  may,  of  course,  proceed  to  the  stage  of  physi- 
cal judgment  without  having  settled  the  ethical  problems 
which  may  have  presented  themselves  at  the  outset.  The 
end  may  be  entertained  tentatively  as  a  hypothesis  until 
certain  mechanical  problems  have  been  dealt  with.  But 
manifestly  this  is  only  postponement  of  the  issue.  The  agent 
is  still  quite  unprepared,  even  after  the  means  have  been  so 
far  determined,  to  take  the  first  step  in  the  execution  of  the 
plan ;  indeed,  his  uncertainty  is  probably  only  the  more  har- 
assing than  before.  Moreover,  the  economic  problems  in 
the  case  are  now  more  sharply  defined,  and  these  for  the  time 
being  still  further  darken  counsel.  Manifestly  the  need  for 
deliberation  is  at  this  point  quite  as  urgent  as  the  need  for 
physical  determination  can  ever  be,  and  the  need  is  evidenced 
in  the  same  way  by  the  actual  arrest  and  postponement  of 
overt  conduct.  The  agent,  despite  his  physical  knowledge, 
is  not  yet  free  to  embrace  the  end  and,  having  done  so,  use 
thereto  the  means  at  his  disposal.  It  is  plainly  impossible 
to  use  the  physical  means  until  one  knows  in  terms  of  Sub- 
stance and  Attribute  or  Cause  and  Effect,  or  whatever  other 
physical  categories  one  may  please,  what  manner  of  behavior 
may  be  expected  of  them.  So  likewise  is  it  as  truly  impos- 
sible, for  one  intellectually  and  morally  capable  of  appreciat- 
ing problems  of  a  more  advanced  and  complex  sort,  to  exploit 
the  physical  properties  thus  discovered  until  ethical  deter- 
mination of  the  end  and  economic  determination  of  the  means 
have  been  completed.' 

There  are,  then,  we  conclude,  cases  in  which  physical 
determination  of  the  means  is  by  itself  not  a  sufficient  prepa- 

1  la  order  to  avoid  complicating  the  problems,  we  have  here  employed  the  com- 
mon notion  that  the  physical  world,  physical  object,  and  property  may  bo  taken  for 
granted  as  possible  adequate  contents  of  judgment,  and  that  the  problem  is  only  as 
to  the  objectivity  of  economic  and  ethical  contents.  Of  course  wo  may,  in  the 
end,  come  to  believe  that  the  "physical"  object  is  itself  an  economic  construct,  in 
the  largo  sense  of  "economic;"  that  is,  an  instrument  of  an  effective  or  successful 
experience.  Thus  in  terms  of  the  illustration  used  above,  in  the  attitude  of  enter- 
taining in  a  general  way  the  plan  of  building  a  house  o/  some  sort  or  other,  one  may 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  235 

ration  for  conduct — in  which  there  are  ethical  and  economic 
problems  which  delay  the  application  of  the  physical  means  to 
the  end  to  which  they  may  be  physically  adapted.  Indeed, 
so  much  as  this  may  well  appear  as  sufficiently  obvious 
without  extended  illustration.  Everyone  knows  that  it  is 
nearly  always  necessary,  in  undertaking  any  work  in  which 
material  things  are  used  as  means,  to  count  the  cost;  and 
everyone  knows  likewise  that  not  every  end  that  is  in  any 
way  attractive  and  within  one's  reach  may  without  more  ado 
be  taken  as  an  object  of  settled  desire  and  effort.  It  is 
indeed  needless  to  elaborate  these  commonplaces  in  the 
sense  in  which  they  are  commonly  understood.  However, 
such  is  not  our  present  purpose.  Our  purpose  is  the  more 
specific  one  of  showing  that  the  meaning  of  Objectivity  must 
be  widened  so  as  to  include  (1)  the  "universe"  of  ends  in 
their  ethical  aspect  and  (2)  the  economic  aspect  of  the 
means  of  action,  as  well  as  (3)  the  physical  aspect  to  which 
the  character  of  Objectivity  is  commonly  restricted.  We 
shall  maintain  that  these  are  parts  or  phases  of  a  complete 
conception  of  Reality,  and  that  of  them,  consequently,  Objec- 
tivity must  be  predicated  for  every  essential  reason  connoted 
by  such  characterization  of  the  world  of  things  "external", 
to  the  senses.  It  has  been  with  this  conclusion  in  mind, 
then,  that  we  have  sought  to  emphasize  the  frequent  serious 
inadequacy,  for  practical  purposes,  of  the  merely  physical 
determination  of  the  means  in  one's  environment. 

The  principle  thus  suggested  would  imply  that  the 
ethical  and  economic  stages  in  the  one  inclusive  process 
of    reflective    attention    should    be    regarded  as  involving, 

have  before  him  various  building  materials  the  ascertained  qualities  of  which  are, 
it  may  be,  socially  recognized  as  in  a  general  way  fitting  them  for  such  a  use.  There 
is  doubtless  so  much  of  real  foundation  for  the  common  notion  here  referred  to. 
But  along  with  the  definiticm  of  the  plan  in  ethical  and  economic  judgment,  along 
with  the  determination  actually  to  build  a  house,  and  a  house  of  a  certain  specific 
kind,  must  go  further  determination  of  the  means  in  their  physical  aspects,  a  deter- 
mination which  all  the  while  reacts  into  the  process  of  determination  of  the  end. 
See  below,  p.  2A&,  note  3. 


236  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

when  they  occur,  the  same  logical  function  of  judgment 
as  is  operative  in  the  sphere  of  sense-perception  and 
the  sciences  generally.  Ethical  and  economic  factors 
must  on  occasion  be  present  at  the  final  choice  and 
shaping  of  one's  course  of  conduct,  along  with  the  physi- 
cal determinations  of  environing  means  and  conditions  which 
one  has  made  in  sense-perception.  There  is,  then,  it  would 
appear,  at  least  a  fair  presumption,  though  not  indeed  an  a 
priori  certainty,  that  these  ethical  and  economic  factors  or 
conditions  have,  like  the  physical,  taken  form  in  a  judgment- 
process  which  will  admit  of  profitable  analysis  in  accordance 
with  whatever  general  theory  of  judgment  one  may  hold  as 
valid  elsewhere  in  the  field  of  knowledge.  This  presumption 
we  shall  seek  to  verify.  Now,  our  interest  in  thus  determin- 
ing, first  of  all,  the  logical  character  of  these  processes  will 
readily  be  understood  from  this,  that,  in  the  present  view, 
these  are  the  processes,  and  the  only  ones  in  our  experience, 
which  are  properly  to  be  regarded  as  processes  of  Valuation. 
We  shall  hold  that  Valuation,  and  so  all  consciousness  of 
Value,  properly  so  called,  must  be  either  ethical  or  economic; 
that  the  only  conscious  processes  in  which  Values  can  come 
to  definition  are  these  processes  of  ethical  and  economic 
judgment.  The  present  theory  of  Value  is,  then,  essentially 
a  logical  one,  in  the  sense  of  holding  that  Values  are  deter- 
mined in  and  by  a  logical — that  is,  a  judgmental — valuation- 
process  and  in  its  details  is  closely  dependent  upon  the 
general  conception  of  judgment  of  which  the  outlines  have 
been  sketched  above.  Accordingly,  the  exposition  must  pro- 
ceed in  the  following  general  order :  Assuming  the  concep- 
tion of  judgment  which  has  been  presented  (which  our 
discussion  will  in  several  ways  further  illustrate  and  so  tend 
to  confirm),  we  shall  seek  to  show  that  the  determinations 
made  in  ethical  and  economic  judgment  are  in  the  proper 
sense  objective.     This  will  involve,  first  of  all,  a  statement 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  237 

of  the  conditions  under  which  the  ethical  and  economic 
judgments  respectively  arise — which  statement  will  serve  to 
distinguish  the  two  types  of  judgment  from  each  other.  We 
shall  then  proceed  to  the  special  analysis  of  the  ethical  and 
economic  forms  from  the  standpoint  of  our  general  theory 
of  judgment,  thereby  establishing  in  detail  the  judgmental 
character  of  these  parts  of  the  reflective  process.  This 
analysis  will  serve  to  introduce  our  interpretation  of  the 
consciousness  of  Value  as  a  factor  in  the  conduct  and  econo- 
my of  life. 

II 

Let  us  then  define  the  problem  of  the  objective  reference 
of  the  valuational  judgments  by  stating,  as  distinctly  as  may 
be,  the  conditions  by  which  ethical  and  economic  deliberation, 
respectively,  are  prompted.  A  study  of  these  conditions  will 
make  it  easier  to  see  in  what  way  the  judgments  reached  in 
dealing  with  them  can  be  objective. 

When  will  an  end,  presenting  itself  in  consciousness  in 
the  manner  indicated  in  our  brief  analysis  of  the  judgment- 
process,  become  the  center  of  attention,  thereby  checking 
the  advance,  through  investigation  of  the  possible  means,  to 
final  overt  action?  This  is  the  general  statement  of  the 
problem  of  the  typical  ethical  situation.  Manifestly  there 
will  be  no  ethical  deliberation  if  the  imaged  end  at  once 
turns  the  attention  toward  the  environment  of  possible 
means,  instead  of  first  of  all  itself  becoming  the  object 
instead  of  the  director  of  attention;  there  will  be  no  sus- 
pension of  progress  toward  final  action,  excepting  such  as 
may  later  come  through  difficulty  in  the  discovery  and 
co-ordination  of  the  means.  However,  there  are  cases  in 
which  the  emergence  of  the  end  forthwith  is  followed  by  a 
check  to  the  reflective  process,  and  the  agent  shrinks  from 
the  end  presented  in  imagination  as  being,  let  us  say,  one 


238  Studies  in  Logical  Theoby 

forbidden  by  authority  or  one  repugnant  to  his  own  estab- 
lished standards.  The  end  may  in  such  a  case  disappear  at 
once ;  very  often  it  will  insistently  remain.  On  this  latter 
supposition,  the  simplest  possibility  will  be  the  development 
of  a  mere  mechanical  tension,  a  "pull  and  haul"  between 
the  end,  or  properly  the  impulses  which  it  represents,  and 
the  agent's  habit  of  suppressing  impulses  of  the  class  to 
which  the  present  one  is,  perhaps  intuitively,  recognized  as 
belonging.  The  case  is  the  common  one  of  "temptation" 
on  the  one  side  and  "principle"  or  "conscience"  on  the 
other,  and  so  long  as  the  two  forces  remain  thus  in  hard-and- 
fast  opposition  to  each  other  there  can  be  no  ethical  delib- 
eration or  judgment  in  a  proper  sense.  The  standard  or 
habit  may  gain  the  day  by  sheer  mechanical  excess  of  power, 
or  the  new  impulse,  the  temptation,  may  prevail  because  its 
onset  can  break  down  the  mechanical  resistance. 

Out  of  such  a  situation  as  this,  however,  genuine  ethical 
deliberation  may  arise  on  condition  that  standard  and 
"temptation"  can  lose  something  of  their  abstractness  and 
their  hard-and-fast  opposition,  and  develop  into  terms  of 
concrete  meaning.  The  agent  may  come  to  see  that  the 
end  is  in  some  definite  way  of  really  vital  interest  and  too 
important  to  be  put  aside  without  consideration.  He  may, 
of  course,  in  this  fall  into  gross  self-sophistication,  like  the 
drunkard  in  the  classical  instance  who  takes  another  glass 
to  test  his  self-control  and  thereby  gain  assurance,  or  he 
may  act  with  wisdom  and  with  full  sincerity,  like  Dorothea 
Casaubon  when  she  renounced  the  impossible  task  imposed 
by  her  departed  husband.  In  the  moral  life  one  can  ask  or 
hope  for  complete  exemption  from  the  risk  of  self-deception 
with  as  little  reason  as  in  scientific  research.  But  however 
this  may  be,  our  present  interest  is  in  the  method,  not  in  par- 
ticular results  of  ethical  reflection.  Whether  properly  so  in 
a  particular  case  or  not,  the  imaged  end  may  come  to  seem 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  239 

at  least  plausibly  defensible  on  grounds  of  principle  which 
serve  to  sanction  certain  other  modes  of  conduct  to  which  a 
place  is  given  in  the  accepted  scheme  of  life ;  or  the  end 
may  simply  press  for  a  relatively  independent  recognition  on 
the  very  general  ground  that  its  emergence  represents  an 
enlargement  and  new  development  of  the  personality.*  The 
end  may  thus  cease  to  stand  in  the  character  of  blind  self- 
assertive  impulse  and  press  its  claim  as  a  positive  means  of 
future  moral  growth,  as  bringing  freedom  from  repressive 
and  enfeebling  restraints  and  as  tending  to  the  reinforce- 
ment of  other  already  valued  modes  of  conduct.  On  the 
other  hand  the  standard  will  cease  to  stand  as  mere  resist- 
ance and  negation  and  may  discover  something  of  its  hidden 
meaning  as  a  product  of  long  experience  and  slow  growth 
and  as  perhaps  a  vital  part  of  the  organization  of  one's  pres- 
ent life,  not  to  be  touched  without  grave  risk. 

Now,  on  whichever  side  the  development  may  first  com- 
mence, a  like  development  must  soon  follow  on  the  other, 
and  it  is  the  action  and  reaction  of  standard  and  prospec- 
tive or  problematic  end  upon  each  other  that  constitutes 
the  process  of  ethical  deliberation  or  judgment.  Just  as 
in  the  typical  judgment-process,  as  sketched  above,  so  also 
here  predicate  and  subject  develop)  each  other,  when  once 
they  have  given  over  their  first  antagonism  and  come  to 
the  attitude  of  reasoning  together.  The  predicate  explains 
itself  that  the  subject  or  new  end  may  be  searchingly  and 
fairly  tested ;  and  under  this  scrutiny  the  subject  develops 
its  full  meaning  as  a  course  of  conduct,  thereby  prompting 
further  analysis  and  reinterpretation  of  the  standard.  But 
this  is  not  the  place  for  detailed  analysis  of  the  process;^ 
here  we  are  concerned  only  to  define  the  type  of  situation, 

1  In  the  moral  life,  as  elsewhsre,  the  distinction  of  deduction  and  induction  is 
one  of  degree.  There  is  but  one  type  or  method  of  inference,  though  some  inferences 
may  approach  more  closely  than  do  others  the  limit  of  pure  "  subsumption." 

2  See  IV  below. 


240  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

and  this  we  may  now  do  in  the  following  terms:  The  indis- 
pensable condition  of  ethical  judgment  is  the  presence  in 
the  agent's  mind  of  at  least  two  rival  interesting  ends  or 
systems  of  such  ends.  In  the  foregoing,  the  subject  of  the 
judgment  is  the  new  end  that  has  arisen;  the  predicate  or 
"standard"  is  the  symbol  for  the  old  ends  or  values  which 
in  the  tension  of  the  judgment-process  must  be  brought  to 
more  or  less  explicit  enumeration  —  and,  we  must  add, 
reconstruction  also.  Indeed  it  is  important  even  at  this 
stage  of  our  discussion  to  observe  that  Predicate  and  Stand- 
ard are  not  equivalent  in  meaning.  The  predicate,  or  predi- 
cative side,  of  judgment  is  the  imagery  of  control  in  the 
process,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  develops  with  the  subject 
side;  while  the  term  "Standard"  connotes  the  rigid  fixity 
which  belongs  to  the  inhibiting  concept  or  ideal  in  the  stage 
before  the  judgment-process  proper  can  begin.  The  ethical 
judgment-process  is,  in  a  word,  just  the  process  of  recon- 
structing standards — as  in  its  other  and  corresponding 
aspect  it  is  the  process  of  interpreting  new  ends.  Those  who 
oppose  measures  of  social  reform  or  new  modes  of  conduct 
or  belief  on  alleged  grounds  of  "immorality"  instinctively 
feel  in  doing  so  that  the  change  may  make  its  way  more  easily 
against  a  resistance  that  will  candidly  explain  itself;  and, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  social  judgment-process,  the  more 
fanatical  know  how  to  turn  to  good  advantage  for  their 
propaganda  the  bitterness  or  contempt  of  those  who  repre- 
sent the  established  order.  On  both  sides  there  are  those 
who  trust  more  in  mechanical  "pull  and  haul"  than  in  the 
intrinsic  merits  of  their  cause. 

Thus  it  is  by  encountering  some  rival  end  or  entire  sys- 
tem of  ends,  as  symbolized  by  an  ideal,  that  a  new  end 
emerging  out  of  impulse  comes  to  stand  for  an  agent,  as 
the  center  of  a  problem  of  conduct,  and  so  to  occupy  the 
center  of  attention.     And  it  thereby  becomes  an  Object,  as 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  241 

we  shall  hold,  which  must  be  more  fully  defined  in  order 
that  it  may  be  valued,  and  accordingly  be  held  to  warrant  a 
determinate  attitude  toward  itself  on  the  agent's  part.  We 
have  now  to  define  in  the  same  general  terms  the  typical 
economic  situation. 

In  economic  theory  as  in  common  thought  it  is  not  the 
contemplated  act  of  applying  certain  means  to  the  attain- 
ment of  an  end  regarded  as  desirable  that  functions  as  the 
logical  subject  of  valuation.  The  thing  or  object  valued  in 
the  economic  situation  is  one's  present  wealth,  whether 
material  or  immaterial,  one's  services  or  labor  —  whatever  one 
gives  in  exchange  or  otherwise  sets  apart  for  the  attainment 
of  a  desired  end  or,  proximately,  to  secure  possession  of  the 
necessary  and  sufficient  means  to  the  attainment  of  a  desired 
end.  The  object  of  attention  in  the  valuing  process  is  here 
not  itself  an  end  of  action.  In  this  respect  the  economic  type 
of  judgment  is  like  the  physical,  for  in  both  the  object  to  be 
valued  is  a  certain  means  which  one  is  seeking  to  adapt  to 
some  more  or  less  definitely  imaged  purpose ;  or  a  condition 
of  which  one  wishes,  likewise  for  some  special  purpose,  to 
take  advantage.  The  ultimate  goal  of  all  judgment  is  the 
determination  of  a  course  of  conduct  looking  toward  an 
end,  and  our  present  problem  may  accordingly  be  stated  in 
the  following  terms :  Under  what  circumstances  in  the 
judgment-process  does  it  become  necessary  to  the  defini- 
tion and  attainment  of  an  end  as  yet  vague  and  indeter- 
minate that  the  requisite  means,  as  in  part  already  physically 
determined,  should  be  further  scrutinized  in  attention  and 
determined  from  the  economic  point  of  view?  Or,  in  a 
word:  What  is  the  "jurisdiction"  of  the  economic  point  of 
view  ? 

For  ordinary  judgments  of  sense-perception  the  presence 
in  consciousness  of  a  single  unquestioned  end  is  the  adequate 
occasion,  as  our  analysis  (assuming  its  validity)  has  shown. 


242  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

I  For  ethical  judgment  we  have  seen  that  the  presence  of  con- 
flicting ends  is  necessary;  and  we  shall  now  hold  that  this 
condition  is  necessary,  though  not,  without  a  certain  quali- 
fication, adequate,  for  the  economic  type  as  well.  If  an 
imaged  end  can  hold  its  place  in  consciousness  without  a 
rival,  and  the  physical  means  of  attaining  it  have  been  found 
and  co-ordinated,  then  the  use  or  consumption  of  the  means 
must  inevitably  follow,  without  either  ethical  or  economic 
judgment ;  for,  to  paraphrase  the  saying  of  Professor  James, 
nothing  but  an  end  can  displace  or  inhibit  effort  toward 
another  end.     The  economic  situation  differs,  then,  from  the 

/  ethical  in  this,  that  the  end  or  system  of  ends  entering  into 
competition  with  the  one  for  the  time  being  of  chief  and  pri- 
mary interest  has  been  brought  to  consciousness  through  ref- 
erence to  those  "  physical "  means  which  already  have  been 
determined  as  necessary  to  this  latter  end.  The  conflict  of  ends 
in  the  economic  situation,  that  is  to  say,  is  not  due  to  a  direct 
and  intrinsic  incompatibility  between  them.  Where  there 
manifestly  is  such  incompatibility,  judgment  will  be  of  the 
ethical  type — as  when  building  the  house  involves  the  fore- 
closure of  a  mortgage,  and  so,  in  working  an  injury  to  the 
holder  of  the  site,  may  do  violence  to  one's  ideal  of  friend- 
ship or  of  more  special  obligation ;  or  when  an  impulse  to 
intemperate  self-indulgence  is  met  by  one's  ideal  of  social 
usefulness.  In  cases  such  as  these  one  clearly  sees,  or  can 
on  reflection  come  to  see,  in  what  way  an  evil  result  to  per- 
sonal character  will  follow  upon  the  imminent  misdeed,  and 
in  what  way  suppression  of  the  mom.entary  impulse  will  con- 
serve the  entire  approved  and  established  way  of  life.  Very 
often,  however,  the  conflicting  ends  are  related  in  no  such 
mutually  exclusive  way.  Each  may  be  in  itself  permissible 
and  compatible  with  the  other,  and,  so  far  as  any  possible 
ethical  discrimination  can  determine,  there  is  no  ground  for 
choice  between  them.      Thus  it  is  only  through  the  fact  that 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  243 


both  ends  are  dependent  upon  a  limited  supply  of  means ', 
that  one  would,  for  example,  ever  bring  together  and  deliber-  ' 
ately  oppose  in  judgment  the  purpose  of  making  additions 
to  his  library  and  the  necessity  of  providing  a  store  of  fuel 
for  the  winter.     Both  ends  in  such  a  case  are  in  themselves  : 
indeed  permissible  in  a  general  way,  but  they  may  very  well 
not  both  of  them  be  economically  possible,  and  hence,  for  | 
the  person  in  question  and  in  the  presence  of  the  economic  j 
conditions  which  confront  him,  not,  in  the  last  analysis,  both 
ethically  possible.     When  there  is  a  conflict  between  two 
ends    that    stand    in   close    organic   relation   in   the   sense 
explained  above,  the  problem  is  an  ethical  one ;  when  the  con- 
flict is,  in  the  sense  explained,  one  of  competition  between 
ends  ethically  permissible — not  at  variance,  either  one,  that 
is,  with  other  ends  directly — for  the  whole  or  for  a  share 
of  one's  supply  of  means,  the  problem  is  of  the  economic 
type.' 

There  are  three  typical  cases  in  which  economic  judg- 
ment or  valuation  of  the  means  is  necessary,  and  the  enu- 
meration of  these  will  make  clear  the  relation  between  the 

1  It  is  no  part  of  the  present  view  that  the  ends  -which  enter  into  economic  conflict 
are  incapable  of  becoming  organic  and  intrinsically  interrelated  members  of  the 
provisional  system  of  life.  On  the  contrary,  the  very  essence  of  our  contention  is 
that  adjustment  established  between  two  such  conflicting  ends  in  economic  judgment 
is  in  itself  ethical  and  a  member  of  the  provisional  system  of  the  individual's  ends  of 
life,  and  will  stand  as  such,  subject  to  modification  through  changes  elsewhere  in 
the  system,  so  long  as  the  economic  conditions  in  view  of  which  it  was  determined 
remained  unchanged.  The  "  mutual  exclusiveness  "  of  the  ends  in  ethical  delibera- 
tion is  simply  the  correlate  of  a  relative  fixity  in  certain  of  the  conditions  of  life.  A 
man's  command  over  the  means  of  obtaining  such  things  as  books  and  fuel  varies 
much  and  often  suddenly  in  a  society  like  ours  from  time  to  time ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  his  physical  condition,  his  intelligence,  his  powers  of  sympathy,  and  his 
spiritual  capacity  for  social  service  commonly  do  not.  Hence  there  can  be  and  is  a 
certain  more  or  less  definite  and  permanent  comprehensive  scheme  of  conduct  mor- 
ally obligatory  upon  him  so  far  as  the  exercise  of  these  latter  faculties  is  concerned, 
but  so  far  as  his  conduct  depends  upon  the  variable  conditions  mentioned,  it  cannot 
be  prescribed  in  general  terms,  nor  will  any  provisional  ideal  of  moral  selfhood 
admit  any  such  prescriptions  as  integral  elements  into  itself.  The  moral  self  is  an 
ideai. construct  based  upon  these  fixed  conditions  of  life  —  conditions  so  fixed  that 
the  spiritual  furtherance  or  deterioration  likely  to  result  from  certain  modes  of  con- 
duct involving  and  affecting  them  can  be  estimated  directly  and  with  relative  ease 
by  the  "ethical"  method  of  judgment.    Implied  in  such  a  construct  is,  of  course,  a 


244  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

ethical  and  the  economic  types  of  judgment:  (1)  First  may 
be  mentioned  the  case  in  which  ethical  deliberation  has 
apparently  reached  its  end  in  the  formation  of  apian  of  action 
which,  so  far  as  one  can  see,  on  ethical  grounds  is  unobjec- 
tionable. A  definite  "  temptation  "  may  have  been  overcome,! 
or  out  of  a  more  complex  situation  a  satisfactory  ethical  com- 
promise or  readjustment  may  have  been  developed  with  much 
difficulty.  Now,  there  are  very  often  cases  in  which  such  a 
course  of  action  still  may  not  be  entered  on  without  further 
hesitation ;  for,  if  the  plan  be  one  requiring  for  its  working 
out  the  use  of  material  means,  the  fact  of  an  existing  limita- 
tion of  one's  supply  of  means  must  bring  hitherto  un thought  of 
ends  into  conflict  with  it.  There  are  doubtless  many  situa- 
tions in  which  one's  moral  choice  may  be  carried  into  prac- 
tice without  consideration  of  ways  and  means,  as  when  one 
forgives  an  injury  or  holds  his  instinctive  nature  under  dis- 
cipline in  the  effort  to  attain  an  ascetic  or  a  genuinely  social 
ideal  of  character.  But  more  often  than  the  moral  rigorist 
cares  to  see,  questions  of  an  economic  nature  must  be  raised 
after  the  ethical  "evidence  is  all  in"  —  questions  which  are 
probably  more  trying  to  a  sensitive  moral  nature  than  those 
more  dramatic  situations  in  which  the  real  perils  of  self- 
sophistication  are  vastly  less,  and  the  simpler,  sharper  defini- 

reference  to  certain  relatively  permanent  social  and  also  physical  conditions.  In  so 
far  as  society  and  physical  nature,  and  for  that  matter  the  individual's  own  nature, 
are  variable,  these  are  the  subjects  of  "scientific"  or  "factual"  judgments  inci- 
dental to  the  determination  of  problems  by  the  "economic"  method  —  problems, 
that  is,  for  which  no  general  answer,  through  reference  to  a  more  or  less  definite  and 
stable  working  concept  of  the  self,  can  be  given.  Thus  our  knowledge  of  the  physi- 
cal universe  is  largely,  if  not  chiefly,  incidental  to  and  conditioned  by  our  economic 
experience.  Again,  our  economic  judgments  are  in  every  case  determinative  of  the 
self  in  situations  in  which,  as  presented  by  (perhaps  even  momentarily)  variable  con- 
ditions, physical,  social,  or  personal,  the  ethical  method  is  inapplicable.  In  a  social- 
istic state,  in  which  economic  conditions  might  be  more  stable  than  in  our  present 
one,  many  problems  in  consumption  which  now  are  economic  in  one  sense  would  be 
ethical  because  admitting  of  solution  by  reference  to  the  type  of  self  presupposed 
in  the  established  state  program  of  production  and  distribution.  Even  now  it  is  not 
easy  to  specify  an  economic  situation  the  solution  of  which  is  absolutely  indifferent 
ethically.  There  is  a  possibility  of  intemperance  even  in  so  "sesthetic"  an  indul- 
gence as  Turkish  rugs. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  245 


tion  of  the  issue  makes  possible  a  less  difficult,  though  a  more 
decisive  and  edifying,  victory.  (2)  In  the  second  place  are 
those  cases  in  which  the  end  that  has  emerged  is  without 
conspicuous  moral  quality,  because,  although  it  may  represent 
some  worthy  impulse,  it  has  not  been  obliged  to  make  its 
way  to  acceptance  against  the  resistance  of  desires  less 
worthy  than  itself.  This  is  the  ideal  case  of  economic  theory 
in  which  "moral  distinctions  are  irrelevant,"  and  the  eco- 
nomic man  is  free,  according  to  the  myth,  to  perform  his 
hedonistic  calculations  withcJut  thought  of  moral  scruple.  The 
end  ethically  acceptable  in  itself,  like  the  enriching  of  one's 
library,  must,  when  the  means  are  limited,  divert  a  portion  of 
the  means  from  other  uses,  and  will  thus,  through  reference 
to  the  indispensable  means,  engage  in  conflict  with  other  ends 
quite  remotely,  if  in  the  agent's  knowledge  at  all,  related 
with  itself.  (3)  Finally  we  reach  the  limit  of  apparent  free- 
dom from  ethical  considerations  in  the  operations  of  business 
institutions,  and  perhaps  especially  in  those  of  large  business 
corporations.  Apart  from  the  routine  operations  of  a  business 
which  involve  no  present  exercise  of  the  valuing  judgment, 
there  are  constantly  in  such  institutions  new  projects  which 
must  be  considered,  and  which  commonly  must  involve 
revaluation  of  the  means.  In  this  revaluation  the  principle 
of  greatest  revenue  is  supposed  to  be  the  sole  criterion, 
regardless  of  other  personal  or  social  points  of  view  from 
which  confessedly  the  measure  might  be  considered.  But 
such  a  supposition,  however  true  to  the  facts  of  current 
business  practice  it  may  be,  we  must  hold  to  be  an  abstrac- 
tion when  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  social  life  at 
large,  and  hence  no  real  exception  to  our  general  principle. 
The  economic  and  the  ethical  situations  differ,  as  types,  only 
in  the  closeness  of  relation  between  the  ends  that  are  in  con- 
flict and  in  the  manner  in  which  the  ends  are  first  brought 
into  conflict  —  not  in  respect  of  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the 


246  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

ends  which  are  involved  in  them.'  It  is  this  difference  which, 
as  we  shall  see,  explains  why  ethical  valuation  must  be  of 
ends,  and  economic  valuation,  on  the  other  hand,  of  means. 

We  have  yet  to  see  in  what  way  valuation  of  the  means 
of  action  can  serve  to  resolve  a  difficulty  of  the  type  which 
has  thus  been  designated  as  Economic.  The  question  must  be 
deferred  until  a  more  detailed  analysis  of  the  economic  judg- 
ment-process can  be  undertaken.  It  is  enough  for  our  pres- 
ent purpose  to  note  that  the  subject  of  valuation  in  this 
process  is  the  means,  and  to  see  that  under  the  typical  con- 
ditions which  have  been  described  some  further  determina- 
tion of  the  means  than  the  merely  physical  one  of  their 
factual  availability  for  the  competing  ends  is  needed.^ 
Physically  and  mechanically  the  means  are  available  for  each 
one  of  the  ends  or  groups  of  ends  in  question ;  the  pressing 
problem  is  to  determine  for  which  one  of  the  ends,  if  any, 
or  to  what  compromise  or  readjustment  of  certain  of  the 
ends  or  all  of  them,  the  means  at  hand  are  in  an  economic 
sense  most  properly  available.' 

1  Accordingly  there  can  be  no  distinction  of  ends,  some  as  ethical,  others  as  eco- 
nomic, but  from  an  ethical  standpoint  indifferent,  and  yet  others  as  amenable 
neither  to  ethical  nor  to  economic  judgment.  The  type  of  situation  and  the  corre- 
sponding mode  of  judgment  employed  determines  whether  an  end  shall  be  for  the 
time  being  ethical,  economic,  or  of  neither  sort  conspicuously. 

2  The  right  of  Prudence  to  rank  among  the  virtues  cannot,  on  our  present  view, 
be  questioned.  Economic  judgment,  though  it  must  be  valuation  of  means,  is  essen- 
tially choice  of  ends — and,  as  would  appear,  choice  of  a  sort  peculiarly  difficult  by 
reason  of  the  usually  slight  intrinsic  relation  between  the  ends  involved  and  also 
by  reason  of  the  absence  of  effective  points  of  view  for  comparison.  Culture,  as 
Emerson  remarks,  "  sees  prudence  not  to  be  a  several  faculty,  but  a  name  for  wis- 
dom and  virtue  conversing  with  the  body  and  its  wants."  And  again,  "  The  spurious 
prudence,  making  the  senses  final,  is  the  god  of  sots  and  cowards,  and  is  the  subject 

of  all  comedy [The  true  prudence]  takes  the  laws  of  the  world  whereby 

man's  being  is  conditioned,  as  they  are,  and  keeps  these  laws  that  it  may  enjoy  their 
proper  good  "  (Essay  on  Prudence). 

3  Here  again  we  purposely  use  inaccurate  language.  Strictly,  the  ends  here 
spoken  of  as  competing  are  such,  we  must  say,  only  because  they  are  as  yet  in  a 
measure  indeterminate,  wanting  in  "clearness,"  and  are  not  yet  understood  in  their 
true  economic  character;  likewise  the  means  are  wanting  in  that  final  shade  or 
degree  of  physical  and  mechanical  detorminateness  which  they  are  presently  to 
possess  as  means  to  a  finally  determinate  economic  end.  Thus  economic  judgment, 
by  which  is  to  be  understood  determination  of  an  end  of  action  by  the  economic 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  247 

From  this  preliminary  discussion  of  the  ethical  and  eco- 
nomic situations  we  must  now  pass  to  discuss  the  objectivity 
of  the  judgments  by  which  the  agent  meets  the  difficulties 
which  such  situations  as  these  present.  We  shall  seek  to 
show  that  these  judgments  are  constructive  of  an  objective 
order  of  reality.  It  will  be  necessary  in  the  first  place  to 
determine  the  psychological  conditions  of  the  more  commonly 
recognized  experience  of  Objectivity  in  the  restricted  sphere 
of  sense-perception.  There  might  otherwise  remain  a  certain 
antecedent  presumption  against  the  thesis  which  we  wish  to 
establish  even  after  the  direct  argument  had  been  presented.* 

Ill 

Common-sense  and  natural  science  certainly  tend  to  iden- 
tify the  objectively  real  with  the  existent  in  space  and  time. 
The  physical  universe  is  held  to  be  palpably  real  in  a  way 
in  which  nothing  not  presented  in  sensuous  terms  can  be. 
To  most  minds  doubtless  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why 
Plato  should  have  ascribed  to  the  Ideas  a  higher  degree  of 
reality  than  that  possessed  by  the  particular  objects  of  sense- 
perception,  and  still  more  difficult  to  understand  his  ascrip- 
tion of  real  existence  to  such  Ideas  as  those  of  Beauty, 
Justice,  and  the  Good.  There  is  a  certain  apparent  stability 
in  a  universe  presented  in  "immediate"  sense-perception — 
a  universe  with  which  we  are  in  constant  bodily  intercourse 

method  and  in  accordance  with  economic  principles,  involves  in  general  physical 
re-determination  of  the  means.  The  means  which  at  the  outset  of  the  present  eco- 
nomic judgment-process  appear  as  physically  available  indifferently  for  either  of  the 
tentative  ends  under  consideration  are  only  in  a  general  way  the  same  means  for 
knowledge  as  they  will  bewhen  the  economic  problem  has  been  solved.  They  are, 
so  far  as  now  determinate,  the  outcome  of  former  physical  judgment-processes  inci- 
dental to  the  definition  of  economic  ends  in  former  situations  like  the  present. 

1  In  our  discussion  of  this  preliminary  question  there  is  no  attempt  to  furnish 
what  might  be  called  an  analysis  of  the  consciousness  of  objectivity.  This  has  been 
undertaken  by  various  psychologists  in  recent  well-known  contributions  to  the  sub- 
ject. For  our  purpose  it  is  necessary  only  to  specify  the  intellectual  and  practical 
attitude  out  of  which  the  consciousness  of  objectivity  arises;  not  the  sensory  "ele- 
ments" or  factors  involved  in  its  production  as  an  experience. 


248  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

— that  seems  not  to  belong  to  a  mere  order  of  relations 
which,  if  known  in  any  sense,  is  not  known  to  us  through 
the  senses.  Moreover,  knowledge  of  the  physical  world  is 
felt  to  possess  a  higher  degree  of  certainty  than  does  any 
knowledge  we  can  have  of  supposed  economic  or  moral  truth, 
or  of  economic  or  moral  standards.  Of  such  knowledge  one 
is  disposed  to  say,  as  Mr.  Spencer  does  of  metaphysics,  that 
at  the  best  it  presupposes  a  long  and  elaborate  inferential 
process  which,  as  long,  is  likely  to  be  faulty ;  whereas  physi- 
cal truth  is  immediate  or  else,  when  inference  is  involved  in 
it,  easy  to  be  tested  by  appeal  to  immediate  facts.  Physi- 
cal reality  is  a  reality  that  can  be  seen  and  handled  and  felt 
as  offering  resistance,  and  this  is  evidence  of  objectivity  of  a 
sort  not  to  be  found  in  other  spheres  of  knowledge  for  which 
the  like  claim  is  made. 

The  force  of  these  impressions^nd  it  would  not  be  diffi- 
cult to  find  stronger  statements  in  the  history  of  scientific 
and  ethical  nominalism)  diminishes  if  one  tries  to  determine 
in  what  consists  that  objectivity  which  they  uncritically 
assume  as  given  in  sense-perception.  For  one  must  recog- 
nize that  not  all  our  possible  modes  of  sense-experience  are 
equally  concerned  in  the  presentation  of  this  perceived 
objective  world.  Certain  sensory  "quales"  are  immediately 
referred  to  outward  objects  as  belonging  to  them.  Certain 
others  are,  in  a  way,  "inward,"  either  not  more  definitely  local- 
ized at  all  or  merely  localized  in  the  sense-organ  which 
mediates  them.  Now,  the  reason  for  this  difference  cannot 
lie  in  the  content  of  the  various  senserqualities  abstractly 
taken.  A  visual  sensation,  apart  from  the  setting  in  which 
it  occurs  in  common  experience,  can  be  no  more  objective  in 
its  reference — indeed,  can  have  no  more  reference  of  any 
kind — than  the  least  definite  and  instructive  organic  sensa- 
tion. For  the  degree  of  distinctness  with  which  one  dis- 
criminates   sense-qualities  depends  upon   the  number  and 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  249 

importance  of  the  interpretative  associations  which  it  is 
important  from  time  to  time  to  "connect"  with  them;  or,  con- 
versely, the  sense-qualities  are  not  se(/"-discriminating  in 
virtue  of  an  intrinsic  objective  reference  or  meaning  which 
each  possesses  and  which  drives  it  apart  from  all  the  rest. 
Indeed,  an  intrinsic  meaning,  if  a  sensation  could  possess 
one,  would  not  only  be  superfluous  in  the  development  of 
knowledge,  but,  as  likely  to  be  mistaken  for  the  acquired  or 
functional  meaning,  even  seriously  confusing.' 

Now,  it  must  be  granted  that,  if  the  "simple  idea  of  sen- 
sation" is  without  objective  reference,  no  association  with 
it  of  similarly  abstract  sensations  can  supply  the  lack.  A 
"movement"  sensation,  or  a  tactual,  having  in  itself  no  such 
meaning,  cannot  merely  by  being  "  associated  "  with  a  simi- 
larly meaningless  visual  sensation  endow  this  latter  with 
reference  to  an  object.  Oij^tive  reference  is,  in  fact,  not  a 
sensuous  thing  ;  it  is  not  a  conscious  "element,"  nor  does  it 
arise  from  any  combination  or  fusion  of  such.  It  is  neither 
in  the  association  of  ideas  as  a  constituent  member,  nor  does 
it  belong  to  the  association  considered  as  a  sequence  of 
psychical  states.  Instead,  in  our  present  view,  it  belongs  to  or 
arises  out  of  the  activity  through  which  and  with  reference 

1  So,  on  the  other  hand,  our  vague  organic  sensations  are  possibly  more  instruct- 
ive as  they  are,  for  their  own  purpose,  than  they  would  be  if  more  sharply  dis- 
criminated and  complexly  referred. 

For  convenience  we  here  meet  the  view  under  consideration  with  its  own  termi- 
nology ;  we  by  no  means  wish  to  be  understood  as  indorsing  this  terminology  as  psy- 
chologically correct.  The  sense-quality  of  which  we  read  in  "  structural  ps>  chology  " 
is,  we  hold,  not  a  structural  unit  at  all,  but  in  fact  a  highly  abstract  development  out 
of  that  unorganized  whole  of  sensory  experience  in  which  reflective  attention  begins. 
There  is,  for  example,  no  such  thing  as  the  simple  unanalyzable  sense-quality  "  red  " 
in  consciousness  until  judgment  has  proceeded  far  enough  to  have  constructed  a 
definite  and  measured  experience  which  may  be  symbolized  as  "  object-before-me- 
possessing-the-attribute-red."  In  place  of  the  original  sensory  total-experience  we 
now  have  a  more  or  less  developed  perceptual  {i.  e.,  judgmental)  total-experience. 
It  is  an  instance  of  the  "  psychological  fallacy"  to  interpret  what  are  really  elements 
of  meaning  in  a  perceived  object  constructed  in  judgment  (for  this  is  the  true  nature 
of  the  "  simple  idea  of  sensation  "  or  "  sense-element  ")  as  so  many  bits  of  psychical 
material  which  were  isolated  from  each  other  at  the  outset,  and  have  been  externally 
joined  together  in  their  present  combination. 


250  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

to  which  associations  are  first  of  all  established.  It  is  an 
aspect  or  kind  of  reference  or  category  under  which  any 
sense-quality  or  datum  is  apperceived  when  it  is  held  apart 
from  the  stream  of  consciousness  in  order  that  it  may  receive 
new  meaning  as  a  stimulus  ;  and  a  sensation  functioning  in 
such  a  "state  of  consciousness"'  is  a  psychical  phenomenon 
very  different  from  the  conscious  element  of  "analytical" 
psychology.  The  extent  to  which  it  is  true  that  the  objec- 
tive world  of  sense-perception  is  pre-eminently  visual  and 
tactual  is  then  merely  an  evidence  of  the  extent  to  which 
the  exigencies  of  the  life-process  have  required  finer  sense- 
discrimination  for  the  sake  of  more  refined  reaction  within 
these  spheres  as  compared  with  others.  Our  conclusion, 
then,  must  be  that  the  consciousness  of  objectivity  is  not 
as  such  sensuous,  even  as  given  in  our  perception  of  the 
material  world.  The  world,  as  viewed  from  the  standpoint 
of  a  particular,  practical  emergency,  is  an  objective  world, 
not  in  virtue  of  its  having  a  "sensuous"  or  a  "material" 
aspect  as  something  existent  per  se,  but  because  it  is  a 
world  of  stimuli  in  course  of  definition  for  the  guidance  of 
activity.^ 

It  will  be  well  to  give  further  positive  exposition  of  the 
meaning  of  the  view  thus  stated.     To  return  once  more  to 

1  The  phrase  is  Kfilpe's  and  is  used  in  his  sense  of  consciousness  taken  as  a  whole, 
as,  for  example,  attentive,  apperceptive,  volitional,  rather  than  in  the  sense  made 
familiar  by  Spencer  and  others. 

2  The  foregoing  discussion  is  in  many  ways  similar  to  Brentano's  upon  the  same 
subject.  In  discussing  his  first  class  of  modes  of  consciousness,  the  Vorstellungen, 
he  says :  "  We  find  no  contrasts  between  presentations  excepting  those  of  the  objects 
to  which  the  presentations  refer.  Only  in  so  far  as  warm  and  cold,  light  and  dark, 
a  high  note  and  a  low,  form  contrasts  can  we  speak  of  the  corresponding  presenta- 
tions as  contrasted  ;  and,  in  general,  there  is  in  any  other  sense  than  this  no  contrast 
within  the  entire  range  of  these  conscious  processes"  {Psychologic  votn  empi- 
rischen  Standpunhte,  Bd.  I,  p.  29).  This  may  stand  as  against  any  attempt  to  find 
contrast  between  abstract  sense-qualities  taken  apart  from  their  objective  reference. 
What  is,  however,  the  ground  of  distinction  between  the  presented  objects'?  Appar- 
ently this  must  be  answered  in  the  last  resort  as  above.  In  this  sense  we  should  need 
finally  to  interpret  "sensuous"  and  "material"  in  terms  of  objectivity  as  above 
defined,  rather  than  the  reverse.  They  are  cases  in  or  specifications  of  the  deter- 
minatiou  of  adequate  stimuli. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  251 

our  fundamental  psychological  conception,  knowledge  is 
essentially  relevant  to  the  solution  of  particular  problems  of 
more  or  less  urgency  and  of  various  kinds  and  figures  in  the 
solution  of  such  problems  as  the  assemblage  of  consciously 
recognized  symbols  or  stimuli  by  which  various  actions  are 
suggested.  The  object  as  known  is  therefore  not  the  same 
as  the  object  as  apprehended  in  other  possible  modes  of  being 
conscious  of  it.  The  workman  who  is  actually  using  his 
tool  in  shaping  his  material,  or  the  warrior  who  is  actually 
using  his  weapon  in  the  thick  of  combat,  is,  if  conscious  of 
these  objects  at  all  (and  doubtless  he  may  be  conscious  of 
them  at  such  times),  not  conscious  of  them  as  objects — as 
the  one  might  be,  for  example,  in  adjusting  the  tool  for  a 
particular  kind  of  use,  and  the  other  in  giving  a  keen  edge 
to  his  blade.  Under  these  latter  circumstances  the  tool  or 
weapon  is  an  object,  and  its  observed  condition,  viewed  in 
the  light  of  a  purpose  of  using  the  object  in  a  certain  way, 
is  regarded  as  properly  suggesting  certain  changes  or 
improvements.  And  likewise  will  the  tool  or  the  weapon 
have  an  objective  character  in  the  agent's  apprehension  in 
the  moment  of  identifying  and  selecting  it  from  among  a 
number  of  others,  or  even  in  the  act  of  reaching  for  it,  espe- 
cially if  it  is  inconveniently  placed.  But  in  the  act  of  freely,' 
using  one's  objective  means  the  category  of  the  objective 
plays  no  part  in  consciousness,  because  at  such  times  there! 
is  no  judgment  respecting  the  means — because  there  is  no 
sufficient  occasion  for  the  isolation  of  certain  conscious  ele- 
ments from  the  rest  of  the  stream  of  conscious  experience 
to  be  defined  as  stimuli  to  certain  needed  responses.  Such 
isolation  will  not  normally  take  place  so  long  as  the  reac- 
tions suggested  by  the  conscious  contents  involved  in  the 
experience  are  fully  adequate  to  the  situation.  Objects  are 
not  normally  held  apart  as  such  from  the  stream  of  conscious- 
ness in  which  they  are  presented  and  recognized  as  possess- 


252  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

ing  qualities  warranting  certain  modes  of  conduct,  except- 
ing as  it  has  become  necessary  to  the  attainment  of  the 
agent's  purposes  to  modify  or  reconstruct  his  activity.' 

Are  things,  then,  apprehended  as  objective  in  virtue  of 
the  agent's  attitude  toward  them,  or  is  the  agent's  attitude 
in  a  typical  case  grounded  upon  an  antecedent  determination 
of  the  objectivity  of  the  things  in  question?  We  must 
answer,  in  the  first  place,  that  there  can  be  no  such  antece- 
dent determination.  We  may,  it  is  true,  speak  of  believing, 
on  the  evidence  of  sight  or  touch,  that  a  certain  object  is 
really  present  before  us.  But  neither  sight  nor  touch  pos- 
sesses in  itself,  as  a  particular  sense-quality,  any  objective 
meaning.  If  touch  is  par  excellence  the  sense  of  the  objec- 
tive and  the  appeal  to  touch  the  test  of  objectivity,  this  can 
only  be  because  touch  is  the  sense  most  closely  and  intimately 
connected  in  our  experience  with  action.  After  any  interval 
of  hesitation  and  judgment,  action  begins  with  contact  with 
and  manipulation  of  the  physical  means  which  have  been 
under  investigation.  Not  only  is  touch  the  proximate  stimu- 
lus and  guide  to  manipulation,  but  all  relevant  knowledge 
which  has  been  gained  in  any  judgment-process,  through  the 
other  senses,  and  especially  through  sight,  must  ultimately 
be  reducible  to  terms  of  touch  or  other  contact  sense.  The 
alleged  tactual  evidence  of  objectivity  is,  then,  rather  a  con- 
firmation than  a  difficulty  for  our  present  view.  In  short, 
we  must  dismiss  as  impossible  the  hypothesis  that  there  can 
be  a  consciousness  of  objectivity  which  is  not  dependent 
upon  and  an  expression  of  primary  antecedent  tendencies 
toward  motor  response  to  the  presented  stimulus.  It  is  our 
attitude  toward  the  prospective  stimulus  that  mediates  the 
consciousness  of  an  object  standing  over  against  us. 

So  far,  indeed,  is  it  from  being  true  that  objectivity  is  a 

1  In  this  connection  reference  may  be  made  to  the  well-known  disturbing  effect 
of  the  forced  introduction  of  attention  to  details  into  established  sensori-motor 
co-ordinations,  such  as  "typewriting,"  playing  upon  the  piano,  and  the  like. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  253 

matter  for  special  determination  antecedently  to  action  that 
by  common  testimony  the  conviction  of  objectivity  comes  to 
lis  quite  irresistibly.  The  object  forces  itself  upon  us,  as  we  ' 
say,  and  "whether  we  will  or  no"  we  must  recognize  its 
presence  there  before  us  and  its  independence  of  any  choice 
of  ours  or  of  our  knowledge.  In  the  cautious  manipulation 
of  an  instrument,  in  the  laborious  shaping  of  some  refrac- 
tory material,  in  the  performance  of  any  delicate  or  difficult 
task,  one's  sense  of  the  objectivity  of  the  thing  with  which 
one  works  is  as  obtrusive  as  remorse  or  grief,  and  as  little  to 
be  shaken  off.  We  shall  revert  to  this  suggested  analogy  at 
a  later  stage  in  our  discussion. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  define  more  precisely  the 
nature  of  the  conditions  in  which  the  sense  of  objectivity 
emerges,  and  this  will  bring  us  to  the  point  at  which  the 
objective  import  of  our  economic  and  ethical  judgments  can 
profitably  be  discussed.  We  have  said  that  the  world  of 
the  physical  is  objective,  not  in  virtue  of  the  sensuous  terms 
in  which  it  is  presented,  but  because  it  is  a  world  of  stimuli 
for  the  guidance  of  human  conduct.  Under  what  circum- 
stances, then,  are  we  conscious  of  stimuli  in  their  capacity 
of  guides  or  incentives  or  grounds  of  conduct  ?  And  the 
answer  must  be  that  stimuli  are  interpreted  as  such,  and  so 
take  on  the  character  of  objectivity,  when  their  precise  char- 
acter as  stimuli  is  still  in  doubt,  and  they  must  therefore 
receive  further  definition. 

For  example,  a  man  pursued  by  a  wild  beast  must  find 
some  means  of  escape  or  defense,  and,  seeing  a  tree  which 
he  may  climb  or  a  stone  which  he  may  hurl,  will  inspect 
these  as  well  as  may  be  with  reference  to  their  fitness  for  the 
intended  purpose.  It  is  at  just  such  moments  as  these, 
then,  that  physical  things  become  things  for  knowledge  and 
take  on  their  stubbornly  objective  character — that  is  to  say, 
when  they  are  essentially  problematic.     Now,  in  order  that 


254  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

any  physical  thing  may  be  thus  problematic  and  so  possess 
objective  character  for  knowledge,  it  must  (1)  be  in  part 
understood,  and  so  prompt  certain  more  or  less  indiscrimi- 
nate responses;  and  (2)  be  in  part  as  yet  not  understood — 
in  such  wise  that,  while  there  are  certain  indefinite  or 
unmeasured  tendencies  on  the  agent's  part  to  respond  to  the 
object  —  climb  the  tree  or  hurl  the  stone — there  is  also  a 
certain  failure  of  complete  unity  in  the  co-ordination  of 
these  activities,  a  certain  contradiction  between  different 
suggestions  of  conduct  which  different  observed  qualities  of 
the  tree  or  stone  may  give,  and  so  hesitation  and  arrest  of 
final  action.  The  pursued  man  views  the  tree  suspiciously 
before  trusting  himself  to  its  doubtful  strength,  or  weighs 
well  the  stone  and  tests  its  rough  edges  before  pausing  to 
throw  it.  Thus,  to  state  the  matter  negatively,  there  are 
two  possible  situations  in  which  the  sense  of  objectivity,  if 
it  emerge  into  consciousness  at  all,  cannot  long  continue. 
An  object  —  as,  for  example,  some  strange  shrub  or  flower — 
which,  in  the  case  we  are  supposing,  may  attract  the  pur- 
sued wayfarer's  notice,  may  awaken  no  responses  relevant 
to  the  emergency  in  which  the  agent  finds  himself;  and  it 
will  therefore  forthwith  lapse  from  consciousness.  Or,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  object,  as  the  tree  or  stone,  may  rightly 
or  wrongly  seem  to  the  agent  so  completely  satisfactory,  or, 
rather,  in  effect  may  be  so,  as  instantly  to  prompt  the  action 
which  otherwise  would  come,  if  at  all,  only  after  a  period  of 
more  or  less  prolonged  attention.  In  neither  of  these  cases, 
then,  is  there  a  problematic  object.  In  the  one  the  thing  in 
question  is  wholly  apart  from  any  present  interest,  and 
therefore  lapses.  In  the  other  case  the  thing  seen  is  com- 
prehended on  the  instant  with  reference  to  its  general  use 
and  merges  immediately  into  the  main  stream  of  the  agent's 
consciousness  withoiit  having  been  an  object  of  express 
attention.     In   neither  case,    therefore,  is  there   hesitation 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  255 

with  reference  to  the  thing  in  question — any  conflict 
between  inconsiderate  positive  responses  prompted  by  cer- 
tain features  of  the  object  and  inhibitions  due  to  recognition 
of  its  shortcomings.  In  a  word,  in  neither  case  is  there  any 
judgment  or  possibility  of  judgment,  and  hence  no  sense  of 
objectivity.  We  can  have  consciousness  of  an  object,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  term,  only  when  some  part  or  general 
aspect  of  the  total  situation  confronting  an  agent  excites  or 
seems  to  warrant  responses  which  must  be  held  in  check  for 
further  determination.  In  terms  of  consciousness,  an  object 
is  always  an  object  of  attention — that  is,  an  object  which  is 
under  process  of  development  and  reconstruction  with  refer- 
ence to  an  end. 

An  inhibited  impulse  to  react  in  a  more  or  less  definite 
way  to  a  stimulus  is,  then,  the  adequate  condition  of  the 
emergence  in  consciousness  of  the  sense  of  objectivity.  So 
long  as  an  activity  is  proceeding  without  check  or  interrup- 
tion, and  no  conflict  develops  between  motor  responses 
prompted  by  different  parts  or  aspects  of  the  situation,  the 
agent's  consciousness  will  not  present  the  distinction  of 
Objective  and  Subjective.  The  mode  of  being  conscious 
which  accompanies  free  and  harmonious  activity  of  this  sort 
may  be  exemplified  by  such  experiences  as  aesthetic  apprecia- 
tion, sensuous  enjoyment,  acquiescent  absorption  in  pleasur- 
able emotion,  or  even  intellectual  processes  of  the  mechanical 
sort,  such  as  easy  computation  or  the  solution  of  simple  alge- 
braic problems  —  processes  in  which  no  more  serious  diffi- 
culty is  encountered  than  suffices  to  stimulate  a  moderate 
degree  of  interest.  If,  however,  reverting  to  the  illustration, 
our  present  need  for  a  stone  calls  for  some  property  which 
the  stone  we  have  seized  appears  to  lack,  consciousness  must 
pass  over  into  the  reflective  or  attentive  phase.  The  stone 
will  now  figure  as  an  object  possessing  certain  qualities  which 
render  it  in  a  general  way  relevant  to  the  emergency  before 


256  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

us.  A  needed  quality  is  missing,  and  this  defect  must  hold 
in  check  all  the  imminent  responses  until  discovery  of  the 
missing  quality  can  set  them  free.  In  a  word,  the  stone  as 
known  to  us  has  assumed  the  station  of  subject  in  a  judgment- 
process,  and  our  effort  is,  if  possible,  to  assign  to  it  a  new 
predicate  relevant  to  our  present  situation.  Psychologically 
speaking,  the  stone  is  an  object,  a  stimulus  to  which  we  are 
endeavoring  to  find  warrant  for  responding  in  some  new  or 
reconstructed  way. 

In  this  process  we  must  assume,  then,  first  of  all,  an 
interest  on  the  agent's  part  in  the  situation  as  a  whole, 
which  in  the  first  place,  in  terms  of  the  illustration,  makes 
the  pursued  one  note  the  tree  or  stone — which  might 
otherwise  have  escaped  his  notice  as  completely  as  any 
passing  cloud  or  falling  leaf  —  and  suggests  what  particu- 
lar qualities  or  adaptabilities  should  be  looked  for  in  it. 
Given  this  interest  in  "making  something"  out  of  the  total 
situation  as  explaining  the  recognition  of  the  stone  and 
the  impulse  to  seize  and  hurl  it,  we  find  the  sense  of  the 
stone's  objectivity  emerging  just  in  the  arrest  of  the  undis- 
criminating  impulse.  The  stone  must  have  a  certain  mean-  / 
ing  as  a  stimulus  first  of  all,  but  it  must  be  a  meaning  not 
yet  quite  defined  and  certain  of  acceptance.  The  stone  will 
be  an  object  only  if,  and  so  long  as,  the  undiscriminating 
impulses  suggested  by  these  elements  of  meaning  are  held 
in  check  in  order  that  they  may  be  ordered,  supplemented, 
or  made  more  definite.  It  is,  then,  the  essence  of  the  pres- 
ent contention  that  physical  things  are  objective  in  our 
experience  in  virtue  of  their  recognized  inadequacy  as 
means  or  incentives  of  action  —  an  inadequacy  which,  in 
turn,  is  felt  as  such  in  so  far  as  we  are  seeking  to  use  them 
as  means  or  grounds  of  conduct,  or  to  avail  ourselves  of 
them  as  conditions,  in  coping  with  the  general  situation 
from  which  our  attention  has  abstracted  them. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  257 

From  this  analysis  of  the  conditions  of  the  consciousness 
of  objectivity  we  must  now  proceed  to  inquire  whether  in  the 
typical  ethical  and  economic  situations,  as  they  have  been 
described,  essentially  these  same  conditions  are  present. 

In  the  ethical  situation,  according  to  our  statement,  the 
subject  of  the  judgment  (the  object  of  attention)  is  the  new 
end  which  has  just  been  presented  in  imagination,  and  we 
have  now  to  see  that  the  agent's  attitude  toward  this  end  is 
for  our  present  purpose  essentially  the  same  as  toward  a 
physical  object  which  is  under  scrutiny.  For  just  as  the 
physical  object  is  such  for  consciousness  because  it  is  partly 
relevant  (whether  in  the  way  of  furthering  or  of  hindering) 
to  the  agent's  purpose,  but  as  yet  partly  not  understood 
from  this  point  of  view,  so  the  imaged  end  may  likewise  be 
ambiguous.  The  agent's  moral  purpose  may  be  the  (very 
likely  mythical)  primitive  one  of  which  we  read  in  "associa- 
tional"  discussions  of  the  moral  consciousness — that  of  avoid- 
ing punishment.  It  may  be  that  of  "  imitative,"  sympathetic 
obedience  to  authority — a  sentiment  whose  fundamental 
importance  for  ethical  psychology  has  long  remained  with- 
out due  recognition.*  It  may  be  loyalty  to  an  ideal  of 
conscience,  or  yet  again  a  purpose  of  enlargement  and 
development  of  personality.  But  on  either  supposition  the 
compatibility  of  the  end  with  the  prevailing  standard  or 
principle  of  decision  may  be  a  matter  of  doubt  and  so  call  for 
judgment.  The  problem  will,  of  course,  be  a  problem  in  the 
full  logical  sense  as  involving  judgment  of  the  type  described 
in  our  discussion  of  the  ethical  situation  only  when  the  atti- 
tudes of  obedience  to  authority  and  to  fixed  ideals  have  been 
outgrown ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  as  might  be  shown,  it  is 
just  the  inevitable  increasing  use  of  judgment  with  refer- 
ence to  these  formulations  of  the  moral  life  which  gradually 

^Cf.  Professor  Baldwin's  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  and  Professor 
McGilvaey's  recent  paper  on  "Moral  Ohligation,'''  Philosophical  Keview,  YoL  XI, 
especially  pp.  349  f. 


258  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

undermines  them  and,  by  a  kind  of  "internal  dialectic"  of 
the  moral  consciousness,  brings  the  agent  to  recognition  as 
well  as  to  more  perfect  practice  of  a  logical  or  deliberative 
method. 

The  end,  then,  is,  in  the  typical  ethical  situation,  an 
object  which  one  must  determine  by  analysis  and  reconstruc- 
tion as  a  means  or  condition  of  moral  "integrity"  and  prog- 
ress. It  is,  accordingly,  in  the  second  place,  an  object 
upon  whose  determination  a  definite  activity  of  the  agent  is 
regarded  by  him  as  depending.  Just  as  in  the  physical 
judgment-process  the  object  is  set  ofip  over  against  the  self 
and  regarded  as  a  given  thing  which,  when  once  completely 
defined,  will  prompt  certain  movements  of  the  body,  so  here 
the  contemplated  act  is  an  object  which,  when  fully  defined 
in  all  its  relevant  psychological  and  sociological  bearings, 
will  prompt  a  definite  act  of  rejection  or  acceptance  by  the 
self.  Now,  it  might  be  shown,  as  we  believe,  that  the  com- 
plete psychological  and  sociological  definition  of  the  course 
of  conduct  is  in  truth  the  full  explanation  of  the  choice; 
there  is  no  separate  reaction  of  the  moral  self  to  which  the 
course  of  conduct  is,  as  defined,  an  external  stimulus.  So 
also  in  the  sphere  of  physical  judgment  complete  definition 
passes  over  into  action  —  or  the  appreciative  mode  of  con- 
sciousness which  accompanies  action  —  without  breach  of 
continuity.  But  within  the  judgment-process  in  all  its  forms 
there  is  in  the  agent's  apprehension  this  characteristic  fea- 
ture of  apparent  separation  between  the  subject  as  an  objec- 
tive thing  presently  to  be  known  and  used  or  responded  to, 
and  the  predicate  as  a  response  yet  to  be  perfected  in  details, 
but  at  the  right  time,  when  one  has  proper  warrant,  to  be  set 
free.  It  is  not  our  purpose  here  to  speak  of  metaphysical 
interpretations  or  misinterpretations  of  this  functional  dis- 
tinction ;  but  only  to  argue  from  the  presence  of  the  distinc- 
tion in  the  ethical  type  of  judgment  as  in  the  physical  as 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  259 

genuine  an  objectivity  for  the  ethical  type  as  can  be  ascribed 
to  the  other.  The  ethical  judgment  is  objective  in  the  sense 
that  in  it  an  object — an  imaged  mode  of  conduct  taken  as 
such — is  presented  for  development  to  a  degree  of  adequacy 
at  which  one  can  accept  it  or  reject  it  as  a  mode  of  conduct. 
The  ethical  predicates  Right  and  Wrong,  Good  and  Bad, 
each  pair  representing  a  particular  standpoint,  as  we  shall 
later  see,  signify  this  accepting  or  rejecting  movement  of 
the  self,  this  "act  of  will,"  of  which,  as  an  act  in  due  time 
to  be  performed,  the  agent  is  more  or  less  acutely  conscious 
in  the  course  of  moral  judgment. 

In  the  economic  situation  also,  as  above  described,  there 
is  present  the  requisite  condition  of  the  consciousness  of 
objectivity.  Here,  as  in  the  ethical  situation,  an  object  is 
presented  which  one  must  redetermine,  and  toward  which 
one  must  presently  act  in  a  way  likewise  to  be  determined  in 
detail  in  judgment.  We  shall  defer  until  a  later  stage  dis- 
cussion of  the  reason  why  this  subject  of  the  economic  judg- 
ment is  the  means  in  the  activity  that  is  in  progress.  We 
are  not  yet  ready  to  show  that  the  means  must  be  the  center 
of  attention  under  the  conditions  which  have  been  specified. 
Here  we  need  only  note  the  fact  of  common  experience  that 
economic  judgment  does  center  upon  the  means,  and  show 
that  in  this  fact  is  given  the  objective  status  of  the  means  in 
the  judgment-process ;  for  the  economic  problem  is  essentially 
that  of  withdrawing  a  portion,  a  "  marginal  increment,"  of 
the  means  from  some  use  or  set  of  uses  to  which  they  are  at 
present  set  apart,  and  applying  it  to  the  new  end  that  has 
come  to  seem,  on  ethical  grounds  at  least,  desirable ;  and  we 
may  regard  this  diversion  as  the  essentially  economic  act 
which,  in  the  agent's  apprehension  during  judgment,  is  con- 
tingent upon  the  determination  of  the  means.  The  object 
as  economic  is  accordingly  the  means,  or  a  marginal  portion 
of  the  means,  which  is  to  be  thus  diverted  (or,  so  to  speak. 


260  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

exposed  to  the  likelihood  of  such  diversion),  and  its  deter- 
mination must  be  of  such  a  nature  as  to  show  the  economic 
urgency,  or  at  least  the  permissibility,  of  this  diversion. 
Into  this  determination,  manifestly,  the  results  of  much 
auxiliary  inquiry  into  physical  properties  of  the  means  must 
enter — such  properties,  for  example,  as  have  to  do  with  its 
technological  fitness  for  its  present  use  as  compared  with  pos- 
sible substitutes,  and  its  adaptability  for  the  new  use  pro- 
posed. Taking  the  word  in  the  broad  sense  of  object  of 
thought,  it  is  always  an  object  in  space  and  time  to  which 
the  economic  judgment  assigns  an  economic  value ;  and  it  is 
true  here  (just  the  same  is  true,  mutatis  mutandis,  of  the 
psychological  and  sociological  determinations  necessary  to 
the  fixation  of  ethical  value)  that  the  economically  motivated 
physical  determination  of  the  objective  means  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  emergency  in  hand  is  the  full  "causal" 
explanation  of  the  economic  act.  It  must,  however,  be  care- 
fully observed  that  this  physical  determination  is  in  the 
typical  case  altogether  incidental,  from  the  agent's  stand- 
point, to  the  assignment  of  an  economic  character  or  value 
to  the  means — a  value  which  will  at  the  close  of  the  judg- 
ment come  to  conscious  recognition.  As  we  shall  see,  the 
process  is  directed  throughout  by  reference  to  economic  prin- 
ciples and  standards,  and  what  shall  be  an  adequate  deter- 
mination in  the  case  depends  upon  the  precision  with  which 
these  are  formulated  and  the  strenuousness  with  which  they 
are  applied.  In  a  word,  the  economic  judgment  assigns  to 
the  physical  object,  as  known  at  the  outset,  a  new  non-  ^ 
physical  character.  Throughout  the  judgment-process  this 
character  is  gaining  in  distinctness,  and  at  the  end  it  is 
accepted  as  the  Value  of  the  means,  as  warrant  for  the 
diversion  of  them  to  the  new  use  which  has  been  decided  on/ 

1  Manifestly,  as  indicated  jnst  above,  this  accepted  value  of  the  object  implies 
fuller  physical  knowledge  of  the  object  than  was  possessed  at  the  outset  of  the  eco- 
nomic judgment.    See  above,  p.  234,  note ;  p.  246,  note  3 ;  and  p,  271,  below. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  261 

We  have  now  to  consider  whether  in  the  actual  ethical 
and  economic  experience  of  men  there  is  any  direct  evidence 
confirming  the  conclusions  which  our  logical  analysis  of  the 
respective  situations  would  appear  to  require.  Can  any 
phases  of  the  total  experience  of  working  out  a  satisfactory 
course  of  conduct  in  these  typical  emergencies  be  appealed 
to  as  actually  showing  at  least  some  tacit  recognition  that 
these  types  of  judgment  present  each  one  an  order  of  reality 
or  an  aspect  of  the  one  reality? 

In  the  first  place,  then,  one  must  recognize  that  in  the 
agent's  own  apprehension  a  judgment  of  value  has  some- 
thing more  than  a  purely  subjective  meaning.  It  is  never 
offered,  by  one  who  has  taken  the  trouble  to  work  it  out 
more  or  less  laboriously  and  then  to  express  it  in  terms 
which  are  certainly  objective,  as  a  mere  announcement  of  de 
facto  determination  or  a  registration  of  arbitrary  whim  and 
caprice.  One  no  more  means  to  announce  a  groundless 
choice  or  a  choice  based  upon  pleasure  felt  in  contemplation 
of  the  imaged  end  than  in  his  judgments  concerning  the 
physical  universe  he  means  to  affirm  coexistences  and 
sequences,  agreements  and  disagreements,  of  "  ideas "  as 
psychical  happenings.  That  there  is  an  ethical  or  economic 
truth  to  which  one  can  appeal  in  doubtful  cases  is,  indeed, 
the  tacit  assumption  in  all  criticism  of  another's  deliberate 
conduct;  the  contrary  assumption,  that  criticism  is  merely 
the  opposition  of  one's  own  private  prejudice  or  desire  to  the 
equally  private  prejudice  or  desire  of  another,  would  render 
all  criticism  and  mutual  discussion  of  ethical  problems  mean- 
ingless and  futile  in  the  plain  man's  apprehension  as  in  the 
philosopher's.  For  the  plain  man  has  a  spontaneous  confi- 
dence in  his  knowledge  of  the  material  world  which  makes 
him  look  askance  at  any  alleged  analysis  of  his  sense- 
perceptions  and  scientific  judgments  into  "associations  of 
ideas,"  and  the  same  confidence,  or  something  very  like  it, 


262  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

attaches  to  judgments  of  these  other  types.  It  may  perhaps 
be  easier  (though  the  concession  is  a  very  doubtful  one)  to 
destroy  a  naive  confidence  in  the  objectivity  of  moral  truth 
than  a  like  confidence  in  scientific  knowledge,  but  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  plain  man's  sense  of  the  urgency,  at 
least  of  ethical  problems,  if  not  of  economic,  is  commonly  less 
acute  than  for  the  physical.  In  the  plain  man's  experience 
serious  moral  problems  are  infrequent  —  problems  of  the 
true  type,  that  is,  which  cannot  be  disposed  of  as  mere  cases  of 
temptation;  one  must  have  attained  a  considerable  capacity 
for  sympathy  and  a  considerable  knowledge  of  social  rela- 
tions before  either  the  recognition  of  such  problems  or 
proper  understanding  of  their  significance  is  possible.  Moral 
and  economic  crises  are  not  vividly  presented  in  sensuous 
imagery  excepting  in  minds  of  developed  intelligence, 
experience,  and  imaginative  power ;  and  the  judgments 
reached  in  coping  with  them  do  not,  as  a  rule,  obviously  call 
for  nicely  measured,  calculated,  and  adjusted  bodily  move- 
ments. The  immediate  act  of  executing  an  important 
economic  judgment  may  be  a  very  commonplace  perform- 
ance, like  the  dictation  of  a  letter,  and  an  ethical  decision 
may,  however  great  its  importance  for  future  overt  conduct, 
be  expressed  by  no  immediate  visible  movements  of  the 
body.  But  this  possible  difference  of  impressiveness  between 
physical  and  other  types  of  judgments  is  from  our  present 
standpoint  unessential;  and  indeed,  after  all,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  there  are  persons  whose  sense  of  moral  obliga- 
tion is  quite  as  distinct  and  influential,  and  even  sensuously 
vivid,  as  their  conviction  of  the  real  existence  of  an  external 
world.  To  the  average  man  it  certainly  is  clear  that,  as  Dr. 
Martineau  declares,  "  it  is  an  inversion  of  moral  truth  to  say 
....  that  honour  is  higher  than  appetite  because  we  feel 
it  so;  we  feel  it  so  because  it  is  so.  This  'ts'  we  know  to 
be  not  contingent  on  our  apprehension,  not  to  arise  from  our 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  263 

constitution  of  faculty,  but  to  be  a  reality  irrespective  of  us 
in  adaptation  to  which  our  nature  is  constituted,  and  for  the 
recognition  of  which  the  faculty  is  given."*  And  the 
impressiveness,  to  most  minds,  of  likening  the  sublimity  of 
the  moral  law  to  the  visible  splendor  of  the  starry  heavens 
would  seem  to  suggest  that  the  apprehension  of  moral  truth 
is  a  mode  of  consciousness,  in  form  at  least,  so  far  akin  to 
sense-perception  as  to  be  capable  of  illustration  and  even 
reinforcement  from  that  type  of  experience. 

At  this  point  we  must  revert  to  a  suggestion  which  pre- 
sented itself  above  in  another  connection,  but  which  at  the 
time  could  not  be  further  developed.  This  was,  in  a  word,  that 
there  is  often  a  feeling  of  ohtrusiveness  in  our  appreciation 
of  the  objectivity  of  the  things  before  us  in  ordinary  sense- 
perception  (or  physical  judgment)  which  is  not  unlike  the 
felt  insistence  of  remorse  and  grief .^  This  feeling  is  so  con- 
spicuous a  feature  of  the  state  of  consciousness  in  physical 
judgment  as  frequently  to  serve  the  plain  man  as  his  last 
and  irrefragable  evidence  of  the  metaphysical  independence 
of  the  material  world,  and  it  is  indeed  a  feature  whose  expla- 
nation does  throw  much  light  upon  the  meaning  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  objectivity  as  a  factor  within  experience.  Now, 
there  is  another  common  feeling  —  or,  as  we  do  not  scruple 
to  call  it,  another  emotion  —  which  is  perhaps  quite  as  often 
appealed  to  in  this  way;  though,  as  we  believe,  never  in 
quite  the  same  connection  in  any  argument  in  which  the 
two  experiences  are  called  upon  to  do  service  to  the  same 
end.  Material  objects,  we  are  told,  are  reliable  and  stable 
as  distinguished  from  the  fleeting  illusive  images  of  a 
dream  —  they  have  a  "solidity"  in  virtue  of  which  one 
can  "depend  upon  them,"  are  "hard  and  fast"  remaining 
faithfully  where  one  deposits  them  for  future  use  or,  if  they 
change   and  disappear,  doing  so  in  accordance  with  fixed 

1  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  Vol.  II,  p.  5.  2  See  p.  253  above. 


/ 


264  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

laws  which  make  the  changes  calculable  in  advance.  The 
material  realm  is  the  realm  of  "solid  fact"  in  which  one  can 
work  with  assurance  that  causes  will  infallibly  produce  their 
right  and  proper  effects,  and  to  which  one  willingly  returns 
from  the  dream-world  in  which  his  adversary,  the  "idealist," 
would  hold  him  spellbound.  We  propose  now  briefly  to 
consider  these  two  modes  of  apprehension  of  external  physi- 
cal reality  in  the  light  of  the  general  analysis  of  judgment 
given  above — from  which  it  will  appear  that  they  are,  psy- 
chologically, emotional  expressions  of  what  have  been  set 
forth  as  the  essential  features  of  the  judgment-situation, 
whether  in  its  physical,  ethical,  or  economic  forms.  From 
this  we  shall  argue  that  there  should  actually  be  in  the  ethi- 
cal and  economic  spheres  similar,  or  essentially  identical, 
"emotions  of  reality,"  and  we  shall  then  proceed  to  verify 
the  hypothesis  by  pointing  to  those  ethical  and  economic 
experiences  which  answer  the  description. 

We  have  seen  that  the  center  of  attention  or  subject  in 
the  judgment-process  is  as  such  problematic  —  in  the  sense 
that  there  are  certain  of  its  observed  and  recognized  attri- 
butes which  make  it  in  some  sense  relevant  and  useful  to  the 
purpose  in  hand,  while  yet  other  of  its  attributes  (or  absences 
of  certain  attributes)  suggest  conflicting  activities.  The 
object  which  one  sees  is  certainly  a  stone  and  of  convenient 
size  for  hurling  at  the  pursuing  animal.  The  situation  has 
been  analyzed  and  found  to  demand  a  missile,  and  this 
demand  has  led  to  search  for  and  recognition  of  a  stone. 
The  stone,  however,  may  be  of  a  color  suggesting  a  soft  and 
crumbling  texture,  or  its  form  may  appear  from  a  distance 
to  be  such  as  to  make  it  practically  certain  to  miss  the  mark, 
however  carefully  it  may  be  aimed  and  thrown.  Until  these 
points  of  diflBculty  have  been  ascertained,  the  stone  is  want- 
ing still  in  certain  essential  determinations.  So  far  as  it  has 
been  certainly  determined,  it  prompts  to  the  response  directly 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  265 

suggested  by  one's  general  end  of  defense  and  escape,  but 
there  are  these  other  indications  which  hold  this  response  in 
check  and  which,  if  verified,  will  cause  the  stone  to  be  let  lie 
unused.  Now,  we  have,  in  this  situation  of  conflict  or  ten- 
sion between  opposed  incitements  given  by  the  various  dis- 
criminated characters  of  the  object,  the  explanation  of  the 
aspect  of  obtrusiveness,  of  arbitrary  resistance  to  and  inde- 
pendence of  one's  will,  which  for  the  time  being  seems  the 
unmistakable  mark  or  coefficient  of  the  thing's  objectivity. 
For  it  is  not  the  object  as  a  whole  that  is  obtrusive ;  indeed, 
clearly,  there  could  be  no  obtrusiveness  on  the  part  of  an 
"object  as  a  whole,"  and  in  such  a  case  there  could  also  be 
no  judgment.  The  obtrusion  in  the  case  before  us  is  not  a 
sense  of  the  energy  of  a  recalcitrant  metaphysical  object  put 
forth  upon  a  coerced  and  helpless  human  will,  but  simply 
a  conscious  interpretation  of  the  inhibition  of  certain  of  the 
agent's  motor  tendencies  by  certain  others  prompted  by  the 
object's  "suspicious"  and  as  yet  undetermined  appearances 
or  possible  attributes.  The  object  as  amenable  to  use  — 
those  of  its  qualities  which  taken  by  themselves  are  unques- 
tionable and  clearly  conducive  to  the  agent's  purpose — 
needs  no  attention  for  the  moment,  let  us  say.  The 
attention  is  rather  upon  the  dubious  and  to  all  appearance 
unfavorable  qualities,  and  these  for  the  time  being  make  up 
the  sum  and  content  of  the  agent's  knowledge  of  the  object. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  agent  as  an  active  self  is  identified 
with  the  end  and  with  those  modes  of  response  to  the 
object  which  promise  to  contribute  directly  to  its  realiza- 
tion. It  is  in  this  direction  that  his  interest  is  set  and  he 
strains  with  all  his  powers  of  mind  to  move,  and  it  is  upon 
the  self  as  identified  with,  and  for  the  time  being  expressed 
in,  the  "effort  of  the  agent's  will"  that  the  object  as  resist- 
ant, refusing  to  be  misconstrued,  obtrudes.  One  must  see 
the  object  and  must  acknowledge  its  apparent,  or  in  the  end 


266  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

its  ascertained,  unfitness.  One  is  "coerced."  The  situation 
is  one  of  conflict,  and  it  is  out  of  the  conflict  that  the  essen- 
tially emotional  experience  of  "resistance"  emerges.'  The 
the  more  special  emotions  of  impatience,  anger,  or  discour- 
agement may  in  a  given  case  not  be  present  or  may  be  sup- 
pressed, but  the  emotion  of  objectivity  will  still  remain.^ 

On  the  same  general  principles  the  other  of  our  two 
coeflBcients  of  reality  may  be  explained.  Let  us  assume  that 
the  stone  in  our  illustration  has  at  last  been  cleared  of  all 
ambiguity  in  its  suggestion,  having  been  taken  as  a  missile, 
and  that  the  man  in  flight  now  holds  it  ready  awaiting  the 
most  favorable  moment  for  hurling  it  at  his  pursuer.  It 
will  hardly  be  maintained  that  under  these  conditions  the 
coefficient  of  the  stone's  reality  as  an  object  consists  in  its 
obtrusiveness,  in  its  resistance  to  or  coercion  of  the  self. 
The  stone  is  now  regarded  as  a  fixed  and  determinate  feature 
of  the  situation  —  a  condition  which  can  be  counted  on, 
whatever  else  may  fail.  Over  against  other  still  uncertain 
aspects  of  the  situation  (which  are  now  in  their  turn  real 
because  resistant,  coercive,  and  obtrusive)  stands  the  stone 
as  a  reassuring  fact  upon  and  about  which  the  agent  can 
build  up  the  whole  plan  of  conduct  which  may,  if  all  goes 
well,  bring  him  safely  out  of  his  predicament.  The  stone 
has,  so  to  speak,  passed  over  to  the  "  end  "  side  of  the  situa- 
tion, and  although  it  may  have  to  be  rejected  for  some  other 

1  It  is  not  so  much  the  case  that  the  object,  on  the  one  side,  excites  in  the  agent's 
consciousness,  on  the  other,  the  "  sensations  of  resistance  "  which  have  played  such 
a  part  in  recent  controversy  on  the  subject,  as  that  (1)  the  object  in  certain  of  its 
promptings  is  "resisting"  certain  other  of  its  promptings,  or  that  (2)  certain 
"positive"  activities  of  the  agent  are  being  inhibited  by  certain  "negative"  activi- 
ties, thereby  giving  rise  to  the  "emotion  of  resistance."  That  "positive"  and 
"negative"  are  here  used  in  a  teleological  way  will  be  apparent.  It  is  surely  mis- 
leading to  speak  of  '■^  sensatioTis  of  resistance  "  even  in  deprecatory  quotation  marks, 
except  as  "  sensation  "  is  used  in  its  everyday  meaning,  viz.,  experience  of  strongly 
sensory  quality. 

'  The  general  theory  of  emotion  which  is  here  presupposed,  and  indeed  is  funda- 
mental to  the  entire  discussion,  may  bo  found  in  Peofessoe  Dewey's  papers  on 
"  The  Theory  of  Emotion,"  Psychological  Review,  Vol.  I,  p.  553;  Vol.  II,  p.  13. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  267 

means  of  defense,  as  the  definition  of  the  situation  proceeds 
and  the  plan  of  action  accordingly  changes  (as  in  some  degree 
it  probably  must),  nevertheless  for  the  time  being  the  imaged 
activities  as  stimulus  to  which  the  stone  is  now  accepted  are 
a  fixed  part  of  the  plan  and  guide  in  further  judgment  of 
the  means  still  undefined.  The  agent  can  hardly  recur  to 
the  stone,  when,  after  attending  for  a  time  to  the  bewilder- 
ing perplexities  of  the  situation,  he  pauses  once  more  to  take 
an  inventory  of  his  certain  resources,  without  something  of 
an  emotional  thrill  of  assurance  and  encouracrement.  In 
this  emotional  appreciation  of  the  "  solidity"  and  "dependa- 
bility" of  the  object  the  second  of  our  coefficients  of  reality 
consists.  This  might  be  termed  the  Recognition,  the  other 
the  Perception,  coefficient.  Classifying  them  as  emotions, 
because  both  are  phenomena  of  tension  in  activity,  we  should 
group  the  Perception  coefficient  with  emotions  of  the  Con- 
traction type,  like  grief  and  anger,  and  the  Recognition 
coefficient  with  the  Expansion  emotions,  like  joy  and  triumph. 
Now,  in  the  foregoing  interpretation  no  reference  has 
been  made  to  any  conditions  peculiar  to  the  physical  type  of 
judgment-situation.  The  ground  of  explanation  has  been 
the  feature  of  arrest  of  activity  for  the  sake  of  reconstruction, 
and  this,  if  our  analyses  have  been  correct,  is  the  essence  of 
the  ethical  and  economic  situations  as  well  as  of  the  physi- 
cal. Can  there  then  be  found  in  these  two  spheres  experi- 
ences of  the  same  nature  and  emerging  under  the  same 
general  conditions  as  our  Perception  and  Recognition  coeffi- 
cients of  reality?  If  so,  then  our  case  for  the  objective 
significance  and  value  of  ethical  and  economic  judgment  is 
in  so  far  strengthened.  (1)  In  the  first  place,  then,  the 
object  in  its  economic  character  is  problematic,  assuming 
a  desire  on  the  agent's  part  to  apply  it,  as  means,  to  some 
new  or  freshly  interesting  end,  because  it  has  already  been, 
and  accordingly  now  is,  set  apart  for  other  uses  and  cannot 


268  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

thoughtlessly  be  withdrawn  from  them.  Extended  illustra- 
tion is  not  needed  to  remind  one  that  these  established  and 
hitherto  unquestioned  uses  will  haunt  the  economic  con- 
science as  obtrusively  and  inhibit  the  desired  course  of  eco- 
nomic conduct  with  as  much  energy  of  resistance  as  in  the 
other  case  will  any  of  the  contrary  promptings  of  a  physical 
object.  Moreover,  the  Recognition  coefficient  may  as  easily 
be  identified  in  this  connection.  If  one's  scruples  gain  the 
day,  in  such  a  case  one  has  at  least  a  sense  of  comforting 
assurance  in  the  conservatism  of  his  choice  and  its  accord- 
ance with  the  facts,  however  unreconciled  in  another  way 
one  may  be  to  the  deprivation  that  has  thus  seemed  to  be 
necessary.  If,  however,  the  new  end  in  a  measure  makes 
good  its  case  and  the  modes  of  expenditure  which  the  "  scru- 
ples" represented  have  been  readjusted  in  accordance  with  it, 
then  the  means,  no  less  than  before  the  new  interpretation  had 
been  placed  upon  them,  will  enjoy  the  status  of  Reality  in 
the  economic  sense.  They  will  be  real  now,  however,  not  in 
the  obtrusive  way,  as  presenting  aspects  which  inhibit  the 
leading  tendency  in  the  judgment-process,  but,  instead,  as 
means  having  a  fixed  and  certain  character  in  one's  economic 
life,  which,  after  the  hesitation  and  doubt  just  now  super- 
seded, one  may  safely  count  upon  and  will  do  well  to  keep 
in  view  henceforth.  (2)  In  the  second  place,  mere  mention 
of  the  corresponding  ethical  experiences  must  suffice,  since 
only  extended  illustration  from  literature  and  life  would  be 
fully  adequate:  on  the  one  hand,  the  "still  small  voice"  of 
Conscience  or  the  authoritativeness  of  Duty,  "stern  daugh- 
ter of  the  voice  of  God;"  and,  on  the  other,  the  restful 
assurance  with  which,  from  the  vantage-ground  of  a  satisfy- 
ing decision,  one  may  look  back  in  wonder  at  the  possibility 
of  so  serious  a  temptation  or  in  rejoicing  over  the  new-won 
freedom  from  a  burdensome  and  repressive  prejudice. 

This  must  for  the  present  serve  as  positive  exposition  of 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  269 

our  view  as  to  the  objective  significance  of  the  valuational 

types  of  judgment.     There  are  certain  essential  points  which 

have  as  yet  not  been  touched  upon,  and  there  are  certain 

objections  to  the  general  view  the  consideration  of  which 

will  serve  further  to  explain  it ;  but  the  discussion  of  these 

various  matters  will  more  conveniently  follow  the  special 

analysis  of  the  valuational  judgments,  to  which  we  shall  now 

proceed. 

IV 

In  the  last  analysis  the  ultimate  motive  of  all  reflective 
thought  is  the  progressive  determination  of  the  ends  of 
conduct.  Physical  judgment,  or,  in  psychological  terms, 
reflective  attention  to  objects  in  the  physical  world,  is  at 
every  turn  directed  and  controlled  by  reference  to  a  gradu- 
ally developing  purpose,  so  that  the  process  may  also  be 
described  as  one  of  bringing  to  fulness  of  definition  an  at 
first  vaguely  conceived  purpose  through  ascertainment  and 
determination  of  the  means  at  hand.  The  problematic  situa- 
tion in  which  reflection  takes  its  rise  inevitably  develops  in 
this  two-sided  way  into  consciousness  of  a  definite  end 
on  the  one  side,  and  of  the  means  or  conditions  of  attaining 
it  on  the  other. 

It  has  been  shown  that  there  may  be  involved  in  any 
finally  satisfactory  determination  of  a  situation  an  explicit 
reflection  upon  and  definition  of  the  controlling  end  which 
is  present  and  gives  point  and  direction  to  the  physical 
determination.  But  very  often  such  is  not  the  case.  When 
a  child  sees  a  bright  object  at  a  distance  and  makes  toward 
it,  availing  himself  more  or  less  skilfully  of  such  assistance 
as  intervening  articles  of  furniture  may  afford,  there  is  of 
course  no  consciousness  on  his  part  of  any  definite  purpose 
as  such,  and  this  is  to  say  that  the  child  does  not  subject  his 
conduct  to  criticism  from  the  standpoint  of  the  value  of  its 
ends.     There  is  simply  strong  desire  for  the  distant  red  ball. 


270  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

controlling  all  the  child's  movements  for  the  time  being  and 
prompting  a  more  or  less  critical  inspection  of  the  interven- 
ing territory  with  reference  to  the  easiest  way  of  crossing 
it.  The  purpose  is  implicitly  accepted,  not  explicitly  de- 
termined, as  a  preliminary  to  physical  determination  of  the 
situation.  If  one  may  speak  of  a  development  of  the  pur- 
pose in  such  a  case  as  this,  one  must  say  that  the  develop- 
ment into  details  comes  through  judgment  of  the  environing 
conditions.  To  change  the  illustration  in  order  not  to 
commit  ourselves  to  the  ascription  of  too  developed  a 
faculty  of  judgment  to  the  child,  this  is  true  likewise  of 
any  process  of  reflective  attention  in  the  mind  of  an  adult  in 
which  a  general  purpose  is  accepted  at  the  outset  and  is  car- 
ried through  to  execution  without  reflection  upon  its  ethical 
or  economic  character  as  a  purpose.  The  specific  purpose 
as  executed  is  certainly  not  the  same  as  the  general  purpose 
with  which  the  reflective  process  took  its  rise.  It  is  filled 
out  with  details,  or  may  perhaps  even  be  quite  difiPerent  in 
its  general  outlines.  There  has  necessarily  been  develop- 
ment and  perhaps  even  transformation,  but  our  contention  is 
that  all  this  has  been  effected  in  and  through  a  process  of 
judgment  in  which  the  conditions  of  action,  and  not  the 
purpose  itself,  have  been  the  immediate  objects  of  determi- 
nation. Upon  these  the  attention  has  been  centered,  though 
of  course  the  attention  was  directed  to  them  by  the  purpose. 
To  state  the  case  in  logical  terms,  it  has  been  only  through 
selection  and  determination  of  the  means  and  conditions  of 
action  from  the  standpoint  of  predicates  suggested  by  the 
general  purpose  accepted  at  the  outset  that  this  purpose 
itself  had  been  rendered  definite  and  practical  and  possible 
of  execution.  Probably  such  cases  are  seldom  to  be  found  in 
the  adult  experience.  As  a  rule,  the  course  of  physical  or 
technological  judgment  will  almost  always  bring  to  light 
implications  involved  in  the  accepted  purpose  which  must 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  '271 

inevitably  raise  ethical  and  economic  questions;  and  the 
resolution  of  these  latter  will  in  turn  afford  new  points  of 
view  for  further  physical  determination  of  the  situation.  In 
such  processes  the  logical  nature  of  the  problem  of  ethical 
and  economic  valuation  comes  clearly  into  view. 

In  our  earlier  account  of  the  matter  it  was  more  con- 
venient to  use  language  which  implied  that  ethical  and 
economic  judgment  must  be  preceded  by  implicit  or  explicit 
acceptance  of.  a  definite  situation  presented  in  sense- 
perception,  and  that  these  evaluating  judgments  could  be 
carried  through  to  their  goal  only  upon  the  basis  of  such  an 
inventory  of  fixed  conditions.  Thus  the  ultimate  ethical 
quality  of  the  general  purpose  of  building  a  house  would 
seem  to  depend  upon  the  precise  form  which  this  purpose 
comes  to  assume  after  the  actual  presence  and  the  quality  of 
the  means  of  building  have  been  ascertained  and  the  eco- 
nomic bearings  of  the  proposed  expenditure  have  been 
considered.  Surely  it  is  a  waste  of  effort  to  debate  with 
oneself  upon  the  ethical  rightness  of  a  project  which  is  physi- 
cally impossible  or  else  out  of  the  question  from  the  economic 
point  of  view.  We  are,  however,  now  in  a  position  to  see 
that  this  way  of  looking  at  the  matter  is  both  inaccurate  and 
self-contradictory.  In  the  actual  development  of  our  pur- 
poses there  is  no  such  orderly  and  inflexible  arrangement  of 
stages;  and  if  it  is  a  waste  of  effort  to  deliberate  upon  a 
purpose  that  is  physically  impossible,  it  may,  with  still 
greater  force,  be  argued  that  we  cannot  find,  and  judge  the 
fitness  of,  the  necessary  physical  means  until  we  know  what, 
precisely,  it  is  that  we  wish  to  do.  The  truth  is  that  there  is 
constant  interplay  and  interaction  between  the  various  phases 
of  the  inclusive  judgment-process,  or  rather,  more  than  this, 
that  there  is  a  complete  and  thoroughgoing  mutual  implica- 
tion. It  is  indeed  true  that  our  ethical  purposes  cannot  take 
form  in  a  vacuum  apart  from  consideration  of  their  physical 


272  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

and  economic  possibility,  but  it  is  also  true  that  our  physical 
and  economic  problems  are  ultimately  meaningless  and 
impossible,  whether  of  statement  or  of  solution,  except  as 
they  are  interpreted  as  arising  in  the  course  of  ethical 
conflict. 

We  have,  then,  to  do,  in  the  present  division,  with  situa- 
tions in  which,  whether  at  the  outset  or  from  time  to  time 
during  the  course  of  the  reflective  process,  there  is  explicit 
conflict  between  ends  of  conduct.  These  situations  are  the 
special  province  of  the  judgment  of  valuation.  Our  line  of 
argument  may  be  briefly  indicated  in  advance  as  follows: 

1.  The  judgment  of  valuation,  whether  expressed  in  terms 
of  the  individual  experience  or  in  terms  of  social  evolution,  is 
essentially  the  process  of  the  explicit  and  deliberate  resolu- 
tion of  conflict  between  ends.  As  an  incidental,  though 
nearly  always  indispensable,  step  to  the  final  resolution  of 
such  conflict,  physical  judgment,  or,  in  general,  the  judgment 
of  fact  or  existence,  plays  its  part,  this  part  being  to  define 
the  situation  in  terms  of  the  means  necessary  for  the  execu- 
tion of  the  end  that  is  gradually  taking  form.  The  two 
modes  of  judgment  mutually  incite  and  control  each  other, 
and  neither  could  continue  to  any  useful  purpose  without 
this  incitement  and  control  of  the  other.  Both  modes  of 
judgment  are  objective  in  content  and  significance.  At  the 
end  of  the  reflective  process  and  immediately  upon  the  verge 
of  execution  of  the  end  or  purpose  which  has  taken  form  the 
result  may  be  stated  or  apprehended  in  either  of  two  ways : 
(1)  directly,  in  terms  of  the  end,  and  (2)  indirectly,  in  terms 
or  the  ordered  system  of  existent  means  which  have  been  dis- 
covered, determined,  and  arranged.  If  such  final  survey  of 
the  result  be  taken  by  way  of  preparation  for  action,  or  for 
whatever  reason,  the  end  will  be  apprehended  as  possessing 
ethical  value  and  the  means,  under  conditions  later  to  be 
specified,  as  possessing  economic  value. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  273 

2.  What  then  is  the  nature  and  source  of  this  apprehen- 
sion of  end  or  means  as  valuable  ?  The  consciousness  of  end 
or  means  as  valuable  is  an  emotional  consciousness  expressive 
of  the  agent's  practical  attitude  as  determined  in  the  just 
completed  judgment  of  ethical  or  economic  valuation  and 
arising  in  consequence  of  the  inhibition  placed  upon  the 
activities  which  constitute  the  attitude  by  the  effort  of 
apprehending  or  imaging  the  valued  object.  Ethical  and 
economic  value  are  thus  strictly  correlative;  psychologically 
they  are  emotional  incidents  of  apprehending  in  the  two 
respective  ways  just  indicated  the  same  total  result  of  the 
inclusive  complex  judgment- process.  Finally,  as  the  mo- 
ment of  action  comes  on,  the  consciousness  of  the  ethically 
valued  end  lapses  first;  then  the  consciousness  of  economic 
value  is  lost  in  a  purely  "physical,"  i.e.,  technological,  con- 
sciousness of  the  means  and  their  properties  and  interrela- 
tions in  the  ordered  system  which  has  been  arranged;  and 
this  finally  merges  into  the  immediate  and  undifferentiated 
consciousness  of  activity  as  use  of  the  means  becomes  sure 
and  unhesitating. 

When  we  say  that  the  ends  which  oppose  each  other  in  an 
ethical  situation  (that  is,  a  situation  for  the  time  being  seen  in 
an  ethical  aspect)  are  related,  and  the  ends  in  an  economic 
situation  are  not,  we  by  no  means  wish  to  imply  that  in  the  one 
case  we  have  in  this  fact  of  relatedness  a  satisfactory  solution 
at  hand  which  is  wanting  in  the  other.  To  feel,  for  example, 
that  there  is  a  direct  and  inherent  relationship  between  a 
cherished  purpose  of  self-culture  and  an  ideal  of  social  service 
which  seems  now  to  require  the  abandonment  of  the  purpose 
does  not  mean  that  one  yet  knows  just  how  the  two  ends  should 
be  related  in  his  life  henceforth;  and  again,  to  say  that  one 
can  see  no  inherent  relation  between  a  desire  for  books  and 
pictures  and  the  need  of  food,  excepting  in  so  far  as  both  ends 
depend  for  their  realization  upon  a  limited  supply  of  means, 


214:  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

is  not  to  say  that  the  issue  of  the  conflict  is  not  of  ethical 
significance.  Such  a  view  as  we  here  reject  would  amount  to 
a  denial  of  the  possibility  of  genuinely  problematic  ethical 
situations  ^  and  would  accord  with  the  opinion  that  economic 
judgment  as  such  lies  apart  from  the  sphere  of  ethics  and  is 
at  most  subject  only  to  occasional  revision  and  control  in  the 
light  of  ethical  considerations. 

By  the  relatedness  of  the  ends  in  a  situation  we  mean  the 
fact,  more  or  less  explicitly  recognized  by  the  agent,  that  the 
new,  and  as  yet  undefined,  purpose  which  has  arisen  belongs 
in  the  same  system  with  the  end,  or  group  of  ends,  which 
the  standard  inhibiting  immediate  action  represents.  The 
standard  inhibits  action  in  obedience  to  the  impulse  that  has 
come  to  consciousness,  and  the  image  of  the  new  end  is,  on 
its  part,  definite  and  impressive  enough  to  inhibit  action  in 
obedience  to  the  standard.  The  relatedness  of  the  two 
factors  is  shown  in  a  practical  way  by  the  fact  that,  in  the 
first  instance  at  least,  they  are  tacitly  expected  to  work  out 
their  own  adjustment.  By  the  process  already  described  in 
outline,  subject  and  predicate  begin  to  develop  and  thereby 
to  approach  each  other,  and  a  provisional  or  partial  solution 
of  the  problem  may  thus  be  reached  without  resort  to  any 
other  method  than  that  of  direct  comparison  and  adjustment 
of  the  ends  involved  on  either  side.  The  standard  which 
has  been  called  in  question  has  enough  of  congruence  with 
the  new  imaged  purpose  to  admit  of  at  least  some  progress 
toward  a  solution  through  this  method. 

We  can  best  come  to  an  understanding  of  this  recogni- 
tion of  the  relatedness  of  the  ends  in  ethical  valuation  by 
pausing  to  examine  somewhat  carefully  into  the  conditions 
involved  in  the  acceptance  or  reflective  acknowledgment  of 
a  defined  end  of  conduct  as  being  one's  own.     Any  new  end 

1  Such  is,  in  fact,  the  teaching  of  the  various  forms  of  ethical  intuitionism, 
and  we  find  it  not  merely  implied,  but  explicitly  affirmed,  in  a  work  in  many  respects 
so  remote  from  intuitionism  in  its  standpoint  as  Green's  Prolegomena  to  Ethics. 
See  pp.  178-81,  and  especially  pp.  355-9. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  275 

in  coming  to  consciousness  encounters  some  more  or  less 
firmly  established  habit  represented  in  consciousness  by  a 
sign  or  symbolic  image  of  some  sort,  the  habit  being  itself 
the  outcome  of  past  judgment-process.  Our  present  problem 
is  the  significance  of  the  agent's  recognition  of  a  relatedness 
between  his  new  impulsive  end  and  the  end  which  represents 
the  habit,  and  we  shall  best  approach  its  solution  by  consider- 
ing the  various  factors  and  conditions  involved  in  the  agent's 
conscious  recognition  of  the  established  end  as  being  such. 

In  any  determinate  end  there  is  inevitably  implied  a 
number  of  groups  of  factual  judgments  in  which  are  pre- 
sented the  objective  conditions  under  which  execution  of  the 
end  or  purpose  must  take  place.  There  is  in  the  first  place 
a  general  view  of  environing  conditions,  physical  and  social, 
presented  in  a  group  of  judgments  (1)  descriptive  of  the 
means  at  hand,  of  the  topography  of  the  region  in  which  the 
purpose  is  to  be  carried  out,  of  climatic  conditions,  and  the 
like,  and  (2)  descriptive  of  the  habits  of  thought  and  feeling 
of  the  people  with  whom  one  is  to  deal,  their  prejudices, 
their  tastes,  and  their  institutions.  The  project  decided  on 
may,  let  us  say,  be  an  individual  or  a  national  enterprise, 
whether  philanthropic  or  commercial,  which  is  to  be  launched 
in  a  distant  country  peopled  by  partly  civilized  races.  In 
addition  to  these  groups  of  judgments  upon  the  physical  and 
sociological  conditions  under  which  the  work  must  proceed, 
there  will  also  be  a  more  or  less  adequate  and  impartial 
knowledge  of  one's  own  physical  and  mental  fitness  for  the 
enterprise,  since  the  work  as  projected  may  promise  to  tax 
one's  physical  powers  severely  and  to  require,  for  its  suc- 
cessful conduct,  large  measure  of  industry,  devotion,  patience, 
and  wisdom.  Indeed  any  determinate  purpose  whatever 
inevitably  implies  a  more  or  less  varied  and  comprehensive 
inventory  of  conditions.  Further  illustration  is  not  neces- 
sary for  our  present  purpose.     We  may  say  that  in  a  general 


276  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

way  the  conditions  relevant  to  a  practical  purpose  will  ^roup 
themselves  naturally  under  four  heads  of  classification,  as 
physical,  sociological,  physiological,  and  psychological.  All 
four  classes  are  objective,  though  the  last  two  embrace  con- 
ditions peculiar  to  the  agent  as  an  individual  over  against 
the  environment  to  which  for  purposes  of  his  present  activity 
he  stands  in  a  sense  opposed. 

Now  our  present  interest  is  not  so  much  in  the  enumera- 
tion and  classification  of  possible  relevant  conditions  in  a  typi- 
cal situation  as  in  the  significance  of  these  relevant  conditions 
in  the  agent's  apprehension  of  them.  Perhaps  this  signifi- 
cance cannot  better  be  described  than  by  saying  that  essen- 
tially and  impressively  the  conditions  are  apprehended  as, 
taken  together,  warranting  the  purpose  that  has  been  de- 
termined. We  appeal,  in  support  of  this  account  of  the 
matter,  to  an  impartial  introspection  of  the  way  in  which 
the  means  and  conditions  of  action  stand  related  to  the 
formed  purpose  in  the  moment  of  survey  of  a  situation.  The 
various  details  presented  in  the  survey  of  a  situation  are 
apprehended,  not  as  bare  facts  such  as  one  might  find  set 
down  in  a  scientist's  notebook,  but  as  warranting  —  as  closely, 
uniquely,  and  vitally  relevant  to — the  action  that  is  about  to 
be  taken.  This,  as  we  believe,  is  a  fair  account  of  the  situa- 
tion in  even  the  commoner  and  simpler  emergencies  that 
confront  the  ordinary  man.  Quite  conspicuously  is  it  true 
of  cases  in  which  the  purpose  is  a  purely  technological  one 
that  has  been  worked  out  with  considerable  difficulty  and  is 
therefore  not  executed  until  after  a  somewhat  careful  survey 
of  conditions  has  been  taken.  It  is  often  true  likewise  in 
cases  of  express  ethical  judgment;  if  the  ethical  phases  of 
the  reflective  process  have  not  been  excessively  long  and 
difficult,  our  definite  sense  of  the  ethical  value  of  the  act  we 
are  about  to  do  lapses  quite  easily,  and  the  factual  aspects 
and  features  of  the  situation  as  given  in  one  or  more  of  the 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  277 


four  classes  which  we  have  distinguished  take  on  an  access 
of  significance  in  their  character  of  warranting,  confirming, 
or  even  compelling  the  act  determined  upon.  Of  our  ordi- 
nary sense-perception  in  the  moments  of  its  actual  function- 
ing no  less  than  of  conscience  in  its  aspect  of  a  moral 
perceptive  faculty  are  the  words  of  Bishop  Butler  sensibly 
true  that  "to  preside  and  govern,  from  the  very  economy 
and  constitution  of  man,  belongs  to  it."'  Even  in  cases  of 
more  serious  moral  difficulty  this  sanctioning  aspect  of  the 
means  and  conditions  of  action  is  not  overshadowed.  If  the 
situation  is  one  in  which  by  reason  of  their  complexity  these 
play  a  conspicuous  rOle  and  must  be  surveyed,  by  way  of 
preparation  on  the  agents'  part,  for  performance  of  the  act, 
they  inevitably  assume,  for  the  agent,  their  proper  functional 
character.  In  general,  the  conditions  presented  in  the 
system  of  factual  judgments  have  a  certain  "rightful  author- 
ity" which  they  seem  to  lend  to  the  purpose  or  end  with 
reference  to  which  they  were  worked  out  to  their  present 
degree  of  factual  detail.  The  conditions  can  thus  seem  to 
sanction  the  end  because  conditions  and  end  have  been 
worked  out  together.  Gradual  development  on  the  one  side 
prompts  analytical  inquiry  upon  the  other  and  is  in  turn 
directed  and  advanced  by  the  results  of  this  inquiry.  In 
the  end  the  result  may  be  read  off  either  in  terms  of  end  or  in 
terms  of  conditions  and  means.^  The  two  readinsfs  must  be 
in  accord  and  the  agent's  apprehension  of  the  conditions  as 
warrant  for  the  end  is  expression  in  consciousness  of  this 


153 


"agreement. 

Now  in  this  mode  of  apprehension  of  factual  conditions 
there  is  a  highly  important  logical  implication — an  implica- 

1  Sermon  II. 

2  Not  to  imply  of  course  that  psychologically  or  logically  the  distinction  of  con- 
ditions and  means  is  other  than  a  convenient  superficial  one. 

3  Manifestly  we  have  here  been  approaching  from  a  new  direction  tha  "  Becog- 
nition  coefficient "  of  reality  described  above.    See  p.  266. 


278  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

tion  which  inevitably  comes  more  and  more  clearly  into  view 
with  the  continued  exercise  of  judgment,  even  though  the 
agent's  habit  of  interest  in  the  scrutiny  of  perplexing  situ- 
ations may  still  remain,  by  reason  of  the  want  of  trained 
capacity  for  a  broader  view,  limited  in  its  range  quite  strictly 
to  the  physical  sphere.  This  implication  is,  we  shall  declare 
at  once,  that  of  an  endeavoring,  striving,  active  principle  or 
self  which  can  be  helped  or  hindered  in  its  unfolding  by 
particular  purposes  and  sets  of  corresponding  conditions — 
can  lose  or  gain,  through  devotion  to  particular  purposes,  in 
the  breadth,  fulness,  and  energy  of  its  life.  The  agent's 
apprehension  of  and  reference  to  this  active  principle  of 
course  varies  in  all  degrees  of  explicitness,  according  to  cir- 
cumstances, from  the  vague  awareness  that  is  present  in  a 
simple  case  of  physical  judgment  to  the  clear  recognition  and 
endeavor  at  definition  that  are  characteristic  of  serious 
ethical  crises. 

That  the  situation  should  develop  and  bring  to  light  this 
factor  is  what  should  be  expected  on  general  grounds  of 
logic — for  to  say  that  a  set  of  conditions  warrants  or  sanctions 
or  confirms  a  given  purpose  implies  that  our  purposes  can 
stand  in  need  of  warrant,  and  this  would  seem  to  be  impos- 
sible apart  from  reference  to  a  process  whose  maintenance  and 
development  in  and  through  our  purposes  are  assumed  as  being 
as  a  matter  of  course  desirable.  It  is  of  the  essence  of  our  con- 
tention that  the  apprehension  of  the  conditions  of  action  as 
warranting  the  end  is  a  primordial  and  necessary  feature  of 
the  situation — indeed,  its  constitutive  feature.  If  our  concern 
were  with  the  psychological  development  of  self-consciousness 
as  a  phase  of  reflective  experience,  we  should  endeavor  to  show 
that  this  development  is  mediated  in  the  first  instance  by  the 
"subjective"  phenomena  of  feeling,  emotion,  and  desire 
which  find  their  place  m  the  course  of  the  judgment-process. 
We  should  then  hold  that,  with  the  conclusion  of  the  judg- 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  279 


ment-process  and  the  accompanying  sense  of  the  known 
conditions  as  reassuring  and  confirmatory  of  the  end,  comes 
the  earliest  possibility  of  a  discriminative  recognition  of  the 
self  as  having  been  all  along  a  necessary  factor  in  the 
process.  We  should  hold  that  outside  of  the  process  of  re- 
flective attention  there  can  be  no  psychical  or  "elementary" 
beginnings  of  self -consciousness,  and  then  that,  except  as 
a  development  out  of  the  experience  to  which  we  have  re- 
ferred as  marking  the  conclusion  of  the  attentive  process, 
there  can  be  no  recognized  specific  and  in  any  degree  defin- 
able consciousness  of  self.  All  this,  however,  lies  rather 
beside  our  present  purpose.  We  wish  simply  to  insist  that 
it  is  out  of  the  apprehension  of  conditions  as  reassuring  and 
confirmatory,  out  of  this  "primordial  germ,"  that  the  agent's 
definite  recognition  of  himself  as  a  center  of  development 
and  expenditure  of  energy  takes  its  rise.  Here  are  the 
beginnings  of  the  possibility  of  self-conscious  ethical  and 
economic  valuation. 

This  apprehension  of  the  means  as  warranting  is,  we  have 
held,  a  fact  even  when  the  means  surveyed  are  wholly  of  the 
physical  sort,  and  we  have  thereby  implied  that  consciousness 
of  the  self  as  "energetic"  may  take  its  rise  in  situations  of 
this  type  or  during  the  physical  stage  in  the  development  of 
a  more  complex  total  situation.  It  would  be  an  interesting 
speculation  to  consider  to  what  extent  and  in  what  way  the 
development  of  the  sciences  of  sociology  and  pliysiology  may 
have  been  essentially  facilitated  by  the  emergence  of  this 
form  of  self -consciousness.  But  however  the  case  may  stand 
with  these  sciences  or  with  the  rise  of  real  interest  in  them 
in  the  mind  of  a  given  individual,  interest  in  the  objective 
psychological  conditions  of  a  contemplated  act  is  certainly 
very  closely  dependent  upon  interest  in  that  subjective  self 
which  one  has  learned  to  know  through  the  past  exercise  of 
judgment  in  definition  and  contemplation  of  conditions  of 


280  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

the  three  other  kinds.  The  more  diversified  and  complex 
the  array  of  physical  and  social  conditions  with  reference  to 
which  one  is  to  act,  the  more  important  becomes  not  simply 
a  clearly  articulated  knowledge  of  these,  but  also  a  knowledge 
of  oneself.  The  self  that  is  warranted  in  its  purpose  by  the 
surveyed  conditions  must  hold  itself  in  a  steady  and  consistent 
attitude  during  the  performance  on  pain  of  "falling  short  of 
its  opportunity"  and  thereby  rendering  nugatory  the  reflect- 
ive process  in  which  the  purpose  was  worked  out.  Experi- 
ence abundantly  shows  how  easily  the  assurance  that  comes 
with  the  survey  of  conditions  may  come  to  grief,  though 
there  may  have  been  on  the  side  of  the  conditions,  so  far  as 
defined,  no  visible  change ;  and  in  so  far  as  self-consciousness 
has  already  emerged  as  a  distinguishable  factor  in  such 
situations,  failures  of  the  sort  we  here  refer  to  are  the  more 
easily  identified  and  interpreted.  Some  sudden  impulse  may 
have  broken  in  upon  the  execution  of  the  chosen  purpose; 
there  may  have  been  an  unexpected  shift  of  interest  away 
from  that  general  phase  of  life  which  the  purpose  repre- 
sented ;  or  in  any  one  of  a  number  of  other  ways  may  have 
come  about  a  wavering  and  a  slackening  in  the  resolution 
which  marked  the  commencement  of  action.  The  "energetic" 
self  forthwith  (if  we  may  so  express  it)  recognizes  that  the 
sanction  which  the  conditions  so  far  as  then  known  gave  to 
its  purpose  was  a  misleading  because  an  incomplete  one,  and 
it  proceeds  to  develop  within  itself  a  new  range  of  objective 
fact  in  which  may  be  worked  out  the  explanation,  and  thereby 
a  method  of  control,  of  these  new  disturbing  phenomena. 
The  qualities  of  patience  under  disappointment,  courage  in 
encountering  resistance,  steadiness  and  self-control  in  sus- 
tained and  difficult  effort — these  qualities  and  others  of  like 
nature  come  to  be  discriminated  from  each  other  by  intro- 
spective analysis  and  may  be  as  accurately  measured,  and  in 
general  as  objectively  studied,  as  any  of  the  conditions  to  a 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  281 

saving  knowledge  and  respect  of  which  one  may  already 
have  attained,  and  these  newly  determined  psychological 
conditions  will  henceforth  play  the  same  part  in  affording 
sanction  to  one's  purposes  as  do  the  rest.  An  ordered  system 
of  psychological  categories  or  points  of  view  comes  to  be 
developed,  and  an  accurate  statement  of  conditions  of  per- 
sonal disposition  and  capacity  relevant  to  each  emergency  as 
it  arises  will  hereafter  be  worked  out — over  against  and  in 
tension  with  one's  gradually  forming  purposes  in  like  manner 
as  are  statements  of  all  the  other  relevant  objective  aspects 
of  the  situation.' 

In  the  "energetic"  self,  we  shall  now  seek  to  show,  we 
have  the  common  and  essential  principle  of  both  ethical  and 
economic  valuation  which  marks  these  off  from  other  and  sub- 
ordinate types  of  judgment.  Let  us  determine  as  definitely 
as  possible  the  nature  and  function  of  this  principle. 

The  recognition  of  the  chosen  purpose  as  one  favorable 
or  otherwise  to  the  self,  and  so  the  recognition  of  the  self  as 
capable  of  furtherance  or  retardation  by  its  chosen  purposes, 
is  not  always  a  feature  of  the  state  of  mind  which  may  ensue 
upon  completed  judgment.  In  the  commoner  situations  of 
the  everyday  life  of  normal  persons,  as  practically  always  in 
the  lives  of  persons  of  relatively  undeveloped  reflective  powers, 
it  is  quite  wanting  as  a  separate  distinguished  phase  of  the 
experience.  In  such  cases  it  is  present,  if  present  at  all, 
merely  as  the  vaguely  felt  implicit  meaning  of  the  recogni- 
tion that  the  known  conditions  sanction   and   confirm   the 

1  This,  if  it  were  intended  as  an  account  of  the  genesis  of  psycholosy  as  a  science 
and  of  the  psychological  interest  on  the  part  of  the  individual,  would  doubtless  be 
most  inadequate.  We  have,  for  one  thing,  made  no  mention  of  the  part  which  error 
and  resulting  practical  failure  play  in  stimulating  an  interest  in  the  ju<lgmental 
processes  of  observation  and  the  like,  and  in  technique  of  the  control  of  these.  Here, 
as  well  as  in  the  processes  of  execution  of  our  purposes,  must  bo  found  many  of  the 
roots  of  psychology  as  a  science.  Moreover,  no  explanation  has  been  offered  above 
for  the  appropriation  by  the  "energetic"  self  of  these  phenomena  of  interruption 
and  retardation  of  its  energy  as  being,  in  fact,  its  own,  or  within  itself.  The  problem 
would  appear  to  be  psychological,  and  so  without  our  province,  and  we  gladly  pass 
it  by. 


<;. 


282  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

purpose.  Such  situations  yield  easily  to  attack  and  threaten 
none  of  those  dangers,  none  of  those  possible  occasions  for 
regret  or  remorse,  of  which  complex  situations  make  the  per- 
son of  developed  reflective  capacity  and  long  experience  so 
keenly  apprehensive.  They  are  disposed  of  with  compara- 
tively little  of  conscious  reconstruction  on  either  the  subject  or 
the  predicate  side,  and  when  a  conclusion  has  been  reached 
the  agent's  recognition  of  the  conditions  carries  with  it  the 
comfortable  though  too  often  delusive  assurance  of  the  com- 
plete and  perfect  eligibility  of  the  purpose.  If  the  question  of 
eligibility  is  raised  at  all,  the  answer  is  given  on  the  tacit  prin- 
ciple that  "whatever  purpose  is,  is  right."  To  the  "plain 
man,"  and  to  all  of  us  on  certain  sides  of  our  lives,  every  pur- 
pose for  which  the  requisite  means  and  factual  conditions  are 
found  to  be  at  hand  is,  just  as  our  purpose,  therefore  right. 
The  same  experience  of  failure  and  disappointment  which 
proves  our  purpose  to  have  been,  from  the  standpoint  of 
enlargement  and  enrichment  of  the  self,  a  mistaken  one 
brings  a  clearer  consciousness  of  the  logic  implicit  in  our 
first  confident  belief  in  the  purpose,  and  at  the  same  time 
emphasizes  the  need  of  making  this  logic  explicit.  The  pur- 
pose, as  warranted  to  us  by  the  conditions  and  assembled 
means  that  lay  before  us,  was  our  own,  and  as  our  own  was 
implicitly  a  purpose  of  furtherance  of  the  self.  The  disap- 
pointment that  has  come  brings  this  implication  more  clearly 
into  view,  and  likewise  the  need  of  methodical  procedure, 
not  as  before  in  the  determination  of  conditions,  but  in  the 
determination  of  purposes  as  such ;  for  the  essence  of  the 
situation  is  that  the  execution  of  the  purpose  has  brought  to 
light  some  unforeseen  consequence  now  recognized  as  having 
been  all  the  while  in  the  nature  of  things  involved  in  the 
purpose.  This  consequence  or  group  of  consequences  con- 
sists (in  general  terms)  in  the  abatement  or  arrest  of  desir- 
able modes  of  activity  which  find  their  motivation  elsewhere 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Pkocess  283 

in  the  agent's  system  of  accepted  ends,  and  it  is  registered 
in  consciousness  in  that  sense  of  restriction  or  repression 
from  without  which  is  a  notable  phase  of  all  emotional  experi- 
ence, particularly  in  its  early  stages.  The  consequences  are 
as  undesirable  as  they  are  unexpected,  and  the  reaction  against 
them,  at  first  emotional,  presently  passes  over  into  the  form 
of  a  reflective  interpretation  of  the  situation  to  the  effect  that 
the  self  has  suffered  a  loss  by  reason  of  its  thoughtless  haste 
in  identifying  itself  with  so  unsafe  a  purpose.' 

It  is  the  essential  logical  function  of  the  consciousness  of 
self  to  stimulate  the  valuation  processes  which  take  their  rise 
in  the  stage  of  reflective  thought  thus  attained.  The  con- 
sciousness of  self  is  a  peculiarly  bafiling  theme  for  discussion 
from  whatever  point  of  view,  because  one  finds  its  meaning 
shifting  constantly  between  the  two  extremes  of  a  subjec- 
tivity to  which  "all  objects  of  all  thought"  are  external  and 
an  objective  thing  or  system  of  energies  which  is  known  just 
as  other  things  are — known  in  a  sense  by  itself,  to  be  sure, 
but  known  nevertheless,  and  thought  of  as  an  object  standing 
in  possible  relations  to  other  objects.  Now,  it  is  of  the 
subjective  self  that  we  are  speaking  when  we  say  that  its 
essential  function  is  the  stimulation  or  incitement  of  the 
valuation  processes,  but  manifestly  in  order  to  serve  thus  it 
must  nevertheless  be  presented  in  some  sort  of  sensuous 
'imagery.  The  subjective  self  may,  in  fact,  be  thought  of  in 
many  ways — presented  in  many  different  sorts  of  imagery — 
but  in  all  its  forms  it  must  be  distinguished  carefully  from 

1  We  can,  of  course,  undertake  no  minute  analysis  of  the  psychological  mechan- 
ism or  concatenation  of  the  process  here  sketched  in  barest  outline.  Our  present 
purpose  is  wholly  that  of  description.  Slight  as  our  account  of  the  process  of  transi- 
tion is,  we  give  it  space  only  because  it  seems  necessary  to  do  so  in  order  to  make 
intelligible  the  accounts  yet  to  be  given  of  the  conscious  valuation  processes  for 
which  the  movement  here  described  prepares  the  way. 

It  will  be  observed  that  we  assume  above  that  the  purpose  is  successful  as 
planned  and  by  succeeding  brings  about  the  undesirable  results.  Failure  in  eiecu. 
tion  of  the  purpose  as  such  could  only,  in  the  manner  already  outlined,  prompt  a 
more  adequate  investigation  of  the  factual  conditions. 


284  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

that  objective  self  which,  as  described  in  psychology,  is  the 
assemblage  of  conditions  under  which  the  subjective  or 
"energetic"  self  works  out  its  purposes.  It  may  be  the 
pale,  attenuated  double  of  the  body,  or  a  personal  being 
standing  in  need  of  deliverance  from  sin,  or  an  atom  of 
soul-substance,  or,  in  our  present  terminology,  a  center  of 
developing  and  unfolding  energy.  The  significant  fact  is 
that,  however  different  in  content  and  in  motive  these  various 
presentations  of  the  subjective  self  may  be,  they  are,  one  and 
all,  as  presentations  and  as  in  so  far  objective,  stimuli  to 
some  definite  response.  The  savage  warrior  deposits  his 
double  in  a  tree  or  stone  for  safety  while  he  goes  into  battle ; 
the  self  that  is  to  be  saved  from  sin  is  a  self  that  prompts 
certain  acceptable  acts  in  satisfaction  of  the  quasi-legal  obli- 
gations that  the  fact  of  sin  has  laid  upon  the  agent.  The 
presented  self,  whatever  the  form  it  may  assume  as  presen- 
tation, has  its  function,  and  this  function  is  in  general  that 
of  stimulus  to  the  conservation  and  increase,  in  some  sense, 
of  the  self  that  is  not  presented,  but  for  whom  the  presen- 
tation is.  Now  our  own  present  description  of  the  self  as 
"energetic,"  as  a  center  or  source  of  developing  and  unfold- 
ing energy  is  in  its  way  a  presentation.  It  consists  of 
sensuous  imagery  and  suggests  a  mechanical  process,  or  the 
growth  of  a  plant  perhaps,  which  if  properly  safeguarded 
will  go  on  satisfactorily — a  process  which  one  must  not 
allow  to  be  perturbed  or  hindered  by  external  resistance  or 
internal  friction  or  to  run  down.  To  many  persons  doubt- 
less such  an  account  would  seem  arbitrary  and  fantastic  in 
the  extreme,  but  no  great  importance  need  be  attached  to 
its  details.  The  kind  and  number  and  sensuous  vividness 
of  the  details  in  which  this  essential  content  of  presentation 
may  be  clothed  must  of  course  depend,  for  each  person,  upon 
his  psychical  idiosyncrasy. 

Indeed,  as  the  habit  of  reflection  upon  purposes  comes 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  285 

to  be  more  firmly  fixed,  and  the  procedure  of  valuation  to  be 
consciously  methodical  and  orderly,  the  sensuous  content  of 
the  presented  self  must  grow  constantly  more  and  more 
attenuated  until  it  has  declined  into  a  mere  unexpressed 
principle  or  maxim  or  tacit  presumption,  prescribing  the  free 
and  impartial  application  of  the  method  of  valuation  to 
particular  practical  emergencies  as  these  arise.  For  a  self, 
consisting  of  presented  content  of  whatever  sort,  which  one 
seeks  to  further  through  attentive  deliberation  upon  con- 
crete purposes,  must,  just  in  so  far  as  it  has  content,  deter- 
mine the  outcome  of  ethical  judgment  in  definite  ways. 
Thus  the  soul  that  must  be  saved  from  sin  (if  this  be  the 
content  of  the  presented  self)  is  one  that  has  transgressed 
the  law  in  certain  ways  and  the  right  relations  that  should 
subsist  between  creature  and  Creator,  and  has  thereby 
incurred  a  more  or  less  technically  definable  guilt.  This 
guilt  can  only  be  removed  and  the  self  rehabilitated  in  its 
normal  relations  to  the  law  by  an  appropriate  response  to  the 
situation  —  by  a  choice  on  the  agent's  part,  first,  of  a  certain 
technical  procedure  of  repentance,  and  then  of  a  settled 
purpose  of  living  as  the  law  prescribes.'  So  also  our  own 
image  of  the  self  as  "energetic"  after  the  manner  of  a 
growing  organism  may  well  seem,  if  taken  too  seriously  as 
to  its  presentational  details,  to  foster  a  bias  in  favor  of  over- 
conservative  adherence  to  the  established  and  the  accredited 
as  such.^ 

The  argument  of  the  last  few  paragraphs  may  be  restated 

1  The  case  is  not  essentially  altered  in  logical  character  if  for  the  Levitical  law 
be  substituted  the  general  principles  of  the  new  dispensation  read  off  into  details 
by  an  authoritative  church  or  by  "  private  judgment." 

2  A  remark  may  be  added  here  by  way  of  caution.  The  presented  self,  we  have 
said,  attenuates  to  a  mere  maxim  or  tacit  presumption  in  favor  of  a  certain  type  of 
logical  procedure  in  dealing  with  the  situation.  It  must  be  remembered  that  the 
presented  self,  like  all  other  presentation,  is  and  comes  to  be  for  the  sake  of  its 
function  in  experience,  and  so  is  practical  from  the  start.  The  process  sketched 
above  is  therefore  not  from  bare  presented  content  as  such  to  a  methodological 
presumption,  which,  as  methodological  and  not  contentual,  is  qualitatively  dif- 
ferent from  what  preceded  it. 


286  Studies  in  Logical  Theoby 

in  the  following  way  in  terms  of  the  evolution  of  the  indi- 
vidual's moral  attitude  or  technique  of  self-control: 

1.  In  the  stage  of  moral  evolution  in  which  custom  and 
authority  are  the  controlling  principles  of  conduct,  moral 
judgment  in  the  proper  sense  of  self-conscious,  critical,  and 
reconstructive  valuation  of  purposes  is  wanting.  Such  judg- 
ment as  finds  here  a  place  is  at  best  of  the  merely  casuistical 
type,  looking  to  a  determination  of  particular  cases  as  falling 
within  the  scope  of  fixed  and  definite  concepts.  There  is  no 
self-consciousness  except  such  as  may  be  mediated  by  the 
sentiment  of  willing  obedience.  It  is,  at  this  stage,  not  the 
particular  sort  of  conduct  which  the  law  prescribes  that  in 
the  agent's  apprehension  enlarges  and  develops  the  self;  so 
far  as  any  thought  of  enlargement  and  development  of  the 
self  plays  a  part  in  influencing  conduct,  these  eflPects  are  such 
as,  in  the  agent's  trusting  faith,  will  come  from  an  entire  and 
willing  acceptance  of  the  law  as  such.  "If  any  man  will  do 
His  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine."  Moreover,  the  stage 
of  custom  and  authority  goes  along  with,  in  social  evolution, 
either  very  simple  social  conditions  or  else  conditions  which, 
though  very  complex,  are  stable,  so  that  in  either  case  the 
conditions  of  conduct  are  in  general  in  harmony  with  the 
conduct  which  custom  and  authority  prescribe.  The  law, 
therefore,  can  be  absolute  and  takes  no  account  of  possible 
inability  to  obey.  The  divine  justice  punishes  infraction  of 
the  law  simply  as  objective  infraction ;  not  as  sin,  in  propor- 
tion to  the  sinner's  responsibility. 

2.  But  inevitably  custom  and  authority  come  to  be  inade- 
quate. As  social  conditions  change,  custom  becomes  anti- 
quated and  authority  blunders,  wavers,  contradicts  itself  in 
the  endeavor  to  prescribe  suitable  modes  of  individual  con- 
duct. Obedience  no  longer  is  the  way  to  light.  The  self 
becomes  self-conscious  through  feeling  more  and  more  the 
repression  and  the  misdirection  of  its  energies  that  obedi- 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  287 

ence  now  involves.  This  is  the  stage  of  subjective  morality 
or  conscience;  and  the  rise  of  conscience,  the  attitude  of 
appeal  to  conscience,  means  the  beginning  of  endeavor  at 
methodical  solution  of  those  new  problematic  situations  in  the 
attempt  to  deal  with  which  authority  as  such  has  palpably 
collapsed.  We  say,  however,  that  conscience  is  the  begin- 
ning of  this  endeavor;  for  conscience  is,  in  fact,  an  ambigu- 
ous and  essentially  transitional  phenomenon.  On  the  one 
hand  conscience  is  the  inner  nature  of  a  man  speaking 
within  him,  and  so  the  self  furthers  its  own  growth  in  listen- 
ing to  this  expression  of  itself.  In  this  aspect  conscience  is 
methodological.  But  on  the  other  hand  conscience  speaks, 
and,  speaking,  must  say  something  determinate,  however 
general  this  something  may  be.  In  this  aspect  conscience  is 
a  r^sum^  of  the  generic  values  realized  under  the  system  of 
custom  and  authority,  but  to  the  present  continued  attainment 
of  which  the  particular  prescriptions  of  custom  and  author- 
ity are  no  longer  adequate  guides.  Conscience  is  thus  at 
once  an  inward  prompting  to  the  application  of  logical 
method  to  the  case  in  hand  and  a  body  of  general  or  specific 
rules  under  some  one  of  which  the  case  can  be  subsumed. 
In  ethical  theory  we  accordingly  find  no  unanimity  as  to  the 
nature  of  conscience.  At  the  one  extreme  it  is  the  voice  of 
God  speaking  in  us  or  through  us,  in  detailed  and  specific 
terms — and  so,  virtually,  custom  and  authority  in  disguise. 
At  the  other  it  is  an  empty  abstract  intuition  that  the  right 
is  binding  upon  us — and,  so,  simply  the  hypostasis  of 
demand  for  a  logical  procedure.  The  history  of  ethics 
presents  us  with  all  possible  intermediate  conceptions  in 
which  these  extreme  motives  are  more  or  less  skilfully  inter- 
woven or  combined  in  varying  proportions.  The  truth  is 
that  conscience  is  essentially  a  transitional  conception,  and 
so  necessarily  looks  before  and  after.  In  one  of  its  aspects 
it  is  a  self  which  has  come  to  miss  (and  therefore  to  image 


288  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 


for  itself)  the  values  and,  it  may  be,  a  certain  dawning  sense 
of  vitality  and  growth  which  obedience  to  authority  once 
afforded.'  In  its  other  aspect  it  is  a  self  that  is  looking  for- 
ward in  a  self-reliant  way  to  the  determination  on  its  own 
account  of  its  purposes  and  values.  And  finally,  as  for  the 
environing  world  of  means  and  conditions,  clearly  this  is  not 
necessarily  harmonious  with  and  amenable  to  conscience; 
indeed,  in  the  nature  of  things  it  can  be  only  partially  so. 
The  morality  of  conscience  is,  therefore,  either  mystical,  a 
morality  that  seeks  to  escape  the  world  in  the  very  moment 
of  its  afiirmation  that  the  world  is  unreal  (because  worthless), 
or  else  it  takes  refuge  in  a  virtual  distinction  between  "abso- 
lute" and  "relative"  morality  (to  borrow  a  terminology  from 
a  system  in  which  properly  it  should  have  no  place),  perhaps 
setting  up  as  an  intermediary  between  heaven  and  earth  a 
machinery  of  special  dispensation.^ 

3.  Conscience  professes  in  general,  that  is,  to  be  autono- 
mous, and  the  profession  is,  strictly  speaking,  a  contradiction 
in  terms.  Moreover,  apart  from  considerations  of  the  logic 
of  the  situation,  theories  of  conscience  have,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  always  lent  themselves  kindly  to  theological  purposes 
just  as  the  theory  of  self-realization  in  its  classic  modern 
statement  rests  upon  a  metaphysical  doctrine  of  the  Abso- 
lute.^ Inevitably  the  movement  concealed  within  this  essen- 
tially unstable  conception  must  have  its  legitimate  outcome 
(1)  in  a  clearing  of  the  presented  self  of  its  fixed  elements 
of  content,  thus  setting  it  free  in  its  character  of  a  non- 
presentational  principle  of  valuation,  and  (2)  a  setting  apart 
of  these  elements  of  content  from  the  principle  of  valuation 

1  Recognized  authority  is,  of  course,  not  the  same  thing  by  any  means  as 
authority  unrecognized  because  absolutely  dominant. 

2  We  may  bo  pardoned  for  supplying  from  the  history  of  ethics  no  illustrations 
of  this  slight  sketch. 

3  In  fact,  as  suggested  above,  the  Prolegomena  to  Ethics  is  in  many  respects 
essentially  intuitional  in  spirit,  though  its  intuitionism  is  of  a  modern  discreetly 
attenuated  sort. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  289 


as  standards  for  reference  and  consultation  rather  than  as 
law  to  be  obeyed. 

We  have  thus  correlated  our  account  of  the  logic  whereby 
the  "energetic"  self  comes  to  explicit  recognition  as  stimu- 
lus to  the  valuation-process  with  the  three  main  stages  in  the 
moral  evolution  of  the  individual  and  the  race.  We  were 
brought  to  this  first-mentioned  part  of  our  discussion  by  our 
endeavor  to  find  out  the  factors  involved  in  the  first  accept- 
ance of  a  conscious  purpose  (or,  indifferently,  the  subsequent 
recognition  of  it  as  a  standard)  —  an  endeavor  prompted  by 
the  need  of  distinguishing,  with  a  view  to  their  special 
analysis,  the  two  types  of  valuation -process.  We  now  return 
to  this  problem. 

The  following  illustration  will  serve  our  present  undertak- 
ing: A  lawyer  or  man  of  business  is  struck  by  the  great 
need  of  honest  men  in  public  office,  or  has  had  his  attention 
in  some  impressive  way  called  to  the  fact  of  great  inequality 
in  the  present  distribution  of  wealth,  and  to  the  diverse  evils 
resulting  therefrom.  These  facts  hold  his  attention,  perhaps 
against  his  will,  and  at  last  suggest  the  thought  of  his  mak- 
ing some  personal  endeavor  toward  improvement  of  condi- 
tions, political  or  social,  as  the  case  may  be.  On  the  other 
hand,  however,  the  man  has  before  him  the  promise  of  a 
successful  or  even  brilliant  career  in  his  chosen  occupation, 
and  is  already  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  substantial  income,  which 
is  rapidly  increasing.  Moreover,  he  has  a  family  growing 
up  about  him,  and  he  is  not  simply  strongly  interested  in  the 
early  training  and  development  of  his  children,  and  desirous 
of  having  himself  some  share  in  conducting  it,  but  he  sees 
that  the  suitable  higher  education  of  his  children  will  in  a 
few  years  make  heavy  demands  upon  his  pecuniary  means. 
Here,  then,  we  have  a  situation  the  analysis  of  which  will 
enable  us  to  distinguish  and  define  the  provinces  of  ethical 
and  economic  judgment. 


290  Studies  in  Logical  Theoby 


It  is  easy  to  see  that  we  have  here  a  conflict  between 
ends.  On  the  one  side  is  the  thought  of  public  service  in 
some  important  office  or,  let  us  say,  the  thought  of  bettering 
society  in  a  more  fundamental  way  by  joining  the  propa- 
ganda of  some  proposed  social  reform.  This  end  rests  upon 
certain  social  impulses  in  the  man's  nature  and  appeals  to 
him  as  strongly,  we  may  fairly  assume,  as  would  any  pur- 
pose of  immediate  self-interest  or  self-indulgence,  so  that  it 
stands  before  him  and  urges  him  with  an  insistent  pertinacity 
that  at  first  even  puts  him  on  his  guard  against  it  as  a 
temptation.  Over  against  this  concrete  end  or  subject  of 
moral  valuation  stand  other  ends  comprehended  or  symbol- 
ized in  the  ideals  of  regular  and  steady  industry,  of  material 
provision  for  family,  of  paternal  duty  toward  children,  of 
scholarly  achievement  as  lawyer  or  judge,  and  the  like — 
ideals  which  are  indeed  practical  and  personal,  but  which,  as 
they  now  function,  are  general  or  universal  in  character, 
are  lacking  in  the  concreteness  and  emotional  quality  which 
belong  to  the  new  purpose  which  has  just  come  to  imagina- 
tion and  has  brought  these  ideals  into  action  on  the  predicate 
side.  Will  this  life  of  social  agitation  really  be  quite 
"respectable,"  and  befitting  the  character  of  a  sober  and 
industrious  man  ?  Will  it  enable  me  to  support  and  educate 
my  children  ?  Will  it  permit  me  to  devote  sufficient  attention 
to  their  present  care  and  training  ?  And  will  it  not  so  warp 
my  nature,  so  narrow  and  concentrate  my  interests,  as  in  a 
measure  to  disqualify  me  for  the  right  exercise  of  paternal 
authority  over  them  in  years  to  come  ?  Moreover,  will  not  a 
life  of  agitation,  of  constant  intercourse  with  minds  and 
natures  in  many  ways  inferior  to  my  own  and  those  of  my 
present  professional  associates,  lower  my  intellectual  and 
moral  standards,  and  so  make  of  me  in  the  end  a  less  useful 
member  of  society  than  I  am  at  present  ?  These  and  other 
questions  like  them  present  the  issue  in  its  earlier  aspect. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  291 

Presently,  however,  the  tentative  purpose  puts  in  its  defense, 
appealing  to  yet  other  recognized  ideals  or  standards  of  self- 
sacrifice,  benevolence,  or  social  justice  as  witnesses  in  its 
favor.  The  conflict  thus  takes  on  the  subject-predicate  form, 
as  has  already  been  explained.  On  the  one  hand  we  have 
the  undefined  but  strongly  insistent  concrete  purpose;  on 
the  other  hand  we  have  a  number  of  symbolic  concepts  or  uni- 
versals  standing  for  accepted  and  accredited  habitual  modes 
of  conduct.  The  problem  is  that  of  working  the  two  sides 
of  the  situation  together  into  a  unified  and  harmonious  plan 
of  conduct  which  shall  be  at  once  concrete  and  particular, 
as  a  plan  chosen  by  way  of  solution  of  a  given  present 
emergency,  and  universal,  as  having  due  regard  for  past 
modes  of  conduct,  and  as  itself  worthy  of  consideration  in 
coping  with  future  emergencies. 

Now,  how  shall  we  discriminate  the  ethical  and  the  eco- 
nomic aspects  of  the  situation  which  we  have  described? 
We  shall  most  satisfactorily  do  this  through  a  consideration 
of  the  various  sorts  of  conditions  and  means  of  which  account 
must  be  taken  in  working  the  situation  through  to  a  solution, 
or  (to  express  it  more  accurately)  the  various  sorts  of  con- 
ditions and  means  which  need  to  be  defined  over  against  the 
purpose  as  the  purpose  gradually  develops  into  detailed  form. 

We  may  say,  first  of  all,  that  there  are  psychological 
conditions  which  must  be  taken  into  consideration  in  the 
case  before  us.  Our  thesis  is  that  in  so  far  as  a  situation  gives 
rise  to  the  determination  of  psychological  conditions  and  is 
advanced  along  the  way  toward  final  solution  through  deter- 
mination of  these,  the  situation  is  an  ethical  one.  In  other 
words,  we  hold  that  the  ends  at  issue  in  the  situation  are 
"related"  in  so  far  as  they  depend  upon  the  same  set  of  psycho- 
logical conditions.  In  so  far  as  these  statements  are  not  true 
of  the  situation  there  must  be  a  resort  to  economic  judgment. 

By  the  general  questions  suggested  above  as  presenting 


292  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

themselves  to  the  agent  we  have  indicated  in  what  way  the 
course  of  action  taken  must  have  regard  to  certain  psycho- 
logical considerations.  Entering  upon  the  new  way  of  life 
will  inevitably  lessen  the  agent's  interest  in  his  present 
professional  pursuits  and  so  make  difficult,  and  in  the  end 
even  irksome,  any  attempt  at  continuing  in  them  either  as  a 
partial  means  of  livelihood  or  as  a  recreation.  The  new  work 
will  be  absorbing — as  indeed  it  must  be  if  it  is  to  be  worth 
while.  In  the  same  way  the  man  must  recognize  that  his 
nature  is  not  one  of  the  rare  ones  so  richly  endowed  in 
capacity  for  sympathy  that  constant  familiarity  with  general 
conditions  of  misery  and  suflPering  does  not  dull  their  fine- 
ness of  sensibility  to  the  special  concerns  and  interests  of 
particular  individuals.  If  he  takes  his  suffering  fellow-men 
at  large  for  his  children,  his  own  children  will  probably 
suffer  just  in  so  far  the  loss  of  a  father's  special  sympathy 
and  understanding  care.  And  likewise  he  must  be  drawn 
away  and  isolated  from  his  friends,  for  it  will  be  hard  for 
him,  he  must  foresee,  to  hold  free  and  intimate  converse  with 
men  whose  ways  of  thinking  lie  apart  from  his  own  con- 
trolling interest  and  for  whose  insensibility  to  the  things 
that  move  him  so  profoundly  he  must  come  more  and  more 
to  feel  a  certain  impatience  if  not  contempt.  Not  to  enlarge 
upon  these  possibilities  and  others  of  like  nature,  we  must 
see  that  reflection  upon  the  situation  must  presently  bring 
to  consciousness  these  various  consequences  of  the  kind  of 
action  which  is  proposed  and  a  recognition  that  the  ground 
of  relation  between  them  and  the  action  proposed  lies  in 
certain  qualities  and  limitations  of  his  own  nature.  These 
latter  are  for  him  the  general  psychological  conditions  of 
action,  his  "empirical  self,"  the  general  nature  of  which  he 
has  doubtless  already  come  to  be  familiar  with  in  many 
former  situations  perhaps  wholly  different  in  superficial 
aspect  from  from  the  present  one. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  293 

Now,  just  in  BO  far  as  there  is  this  relation  of  mutual 
exclusiveness  between  the  end  proposed  and  certain  of  the 
standard  ends  or  modes  of  conduct  which  are  involved,  judg- 
ment will  be  by  the  direct  or  ethical  method  of  adjustment 
presently  to  be  described.  Let  us  assume  accordingly  that 
a  tentative  solution  of  the  problem  has  been  reached  to 
the  effect  that  a  portion  of  the  lawyer's  time  shall  be  given 
to  his  profession  and  to  his  family  life,  and  that  the  remain- 
der shall  be  given  to  a  moderate  participation  in  the  social 
propaganda.  Over  against  this  tentative  ethical  solution,  as 
its  warrant  in  the  sense  explained  above,  will  stand  in  the 
survey  of  the  situation  that  may  now  be  taken  a  certain 
fairly  definite  disposition  or  Anlage  of  the  capacities  and 
functions  of  the  empirical  self.'  Now  on  the  basis  of  the 
ethical  solution  thus  reached  there  will  be  further  study  of 
the  situation,  perhaps  as  a  result  of  failure  in  the  attempt  to 
carry  the  solution  into  practice,  but  more  probably  as  a 
further  preparation  for  overt  action.  Forthwith  it  develops 
that  the  compromise  proposed  will  be  impossible.  Participa- 
tion in  the  social  agitation  will  excite  hostility  on  the  part 
of  the  classes  from  which  possible  clients  would  come  and 
will  cause  distrust  and  a  suspicion  of  inattention  to  details 
of  business  among  the  lawyer's  present  clientage.  There 
are,  in  a  word,  a  whole  assemblage  of  "external"  sociological 
conditions  (and  we  need  not  stop  to  speak  of  physical 
conditions  which  co-operate  with  these  and  contribute  to 
their  effect)  which  effectually  veto  the  plan  proposed.  In 
general  these  external  conditions  are  such  as  to  deprive  the 
agent  of  the  means  of  living  in  the  manner  which  the  ethical 
determination  of  the  end  proposes.  In  the  present  case, 
unless  some  other  more  feasible  compromise  can  be  devised, 
either  the  one  extreme  or  the  other  must  be  chosen  —  either 
continuance  in  the  profession  and  the  corresponding  general 

1  This  would  appear  to  be  the  logical  value  of  functional  psychology  as  a  science 
of  mental  process. 


294  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

scheme  of  life  or  the  social  propaganda  and  reliance  upon 
such  scant  and  precarious  income  as  it  may  incidentally 
afford. 

We  can  now  define  the  economic  aspect  of  a  situation  in 
terms  of  our  present  illustration.  The  end  which  the  lawyer 
had  in  view  in  a  vague  and  tentative  way  was,  as  we  saw, 
defined  with  reference  to  his  ethical  standards — that  is  to 
say,  a  certain  measure  of  participation  in  the  new  work  was 
determined  as  satisfactory  at  once  to  his  ideals  of  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  social  justice  and  to  his  sense  of  obligation  to 
himself  and  to  his  family.  In  this  sense,  logically  speaking, 
a  subject  was  defined  to  which  a  system  of  predicates,  com- 
prehended perhaps  under  the  general  predicate  of  right  or 
good,  applies.  Now,  however,  it  appears,  from  the  inspection 
of  the  material  and  social  environment,  that  the  execution  of 
this  purpose,  perfectly  in  accord  though  it  may  be  with  the 
spiritual  capacities  and  powers  of  the  agent,  is  possible  only 
on  pain  of  certain  other  consequences,  certain  other  sacri- 
fices, which  have  not  hitherto  been  considered.  That  a 
half-hearted  interest  in  his  profession  would  still  not  prevent 
his  earning  a  moderate  income  from  it  was  never  questioned 
in  the  ethical  "first  approximation"  to  a  final  decision,  but 
now  the  issue  is  fairly  presented,  and,  as  we  must  see,  in  a 
very  difficult  and  distressing  way;  for  the  essence  of  the 
situation  is  that  the  ends  now  in  conflict,  that  of  earning  a 
living  and  caring  for  his  family  and  that  of  laboring  for  the 
social  good,  are  not  intrinsically  (that  is,  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  empirical  self)  incompatible.  On  the  contrary, 
these  two  ends  are  psychologically  quite  compatible,  as  the 
outcome  of  the  ethical  judgment  shows;  only  the  "external" 
conditions  oppose  them  to  each  other.  The  difficulty  of  the 
case  lies,  then,  just  in  the  fact  that  the  conflicting  ends,  both 
standing,  as  they  do,  for  strong  personal  interests  of  the  self, 
nevertheless   cannot   be  brought  to  an  adjustment   by  the 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  295 

direct  method  of  an  appportionment  between  them  of  the 
"spiritual  resources"  or  "energies"  of  the  self.  Instead, 
the  case  is  one  calling  for  an  apportionment  of  the  external 
means,  and  so,  proximately,  not  for  immediate  determination 
of  the  final  end,  but  for  economic  determination  of  the  means. 

We  come  now  to  the  task  of  describing,  so  far  as  this 
may  be  possible,  the  judgment  or  valuation- processes  which 
correspond  to  the  types  of  situation  thus  distinguished.  We 
are  able  now  to  see  that  these  must  be  constructive  processes, 
in  the  sense  that  in  and  through  them  courses  of  conduct 
adapted  to  unique  situations  are  shaped  by  the  concourse  of 
established  standards  with  a  new  end  which  has  arisen  and 
put  in  its  claim  for  recognition.  We  can  see,  moreover,  that 
these  valuation- processes  effect  a  construction  of  a  different 
order  from  that  given  in  factual  judgment.  Factual  judg- 
ment determines  external  objects  as  means  or  conditions 
of  action  from  standpoints  suggested  by  the  analysis  and 
development  of  ends.  Judgments  of  valuation  determine 
concrete  purposes  from  standpoints  given  in  recognized 
general  purposes  of  the  self — purposes  which  are  general  in 
virtue  of  their  having  been  taken  by  abstraction  from  con- 
crete cases,  in  which  they  have  received  particular  formula- 
tion as  purposes,  and  set  apart  as  typical  modes  of  conduct 
in  general  serviceable  to  the  "energetic"  self.'  Logically 
factual  judgment  is  at  all  times  subordinate  to  valuational; 
when  valuational  judgment  has  become  consciously  deliber- 
ate, this  logical  subordination  becomes  explicit  and  factual 
judgment  appears  in  its  true  character.  Its  essential  func- 
tion is  that  of  presenting  the  conditions  which  sanction  and 
stimulate  our  ethically  and  economically  determined  pur- 
poses.^    Finally,  iu  the  construction  of  purposes  and  recon- 

1  We  have  already  given  a  slight  sketch  of  the  historical  process  here  character- 
ized in  the  barest  logical  terms. 

2  Further  consideration  of  the  problem  of  factual  judgment  must  be  deferred  to 
Part  V. 


296  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

struction  of  standards  in  valuation  the  ideal  of  the  expansion 
and  development  of  the  "energetic"  self  controls  —  not  as  a 
"presented"  or  contentual  self  prescribing  particular  modes 
of  conduct,  but  as  a  principle  prescribing  the  greatest  possible 
openness  to  suggestion  and  an  impartial  application  of  the 
method  of  valuation  to  the  case  in  hand.  As  we  have  said, 
in  whatever  sensuous  image  we  figure  the  "energetic"  self, 
its  essential  character  lies  in  its  function  of  stimulating 
methodical  valuation.  In  place  of  the  two-faced  and  ambigu- 
ous "presented"  self,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  stage 
of  conscience,  we  now  have  in  the  stage  of  valuation  the 
"energetic"  self  on  the  one  hand  and  standards  on  the. other.* 
We  have  now  to  consider  the  actual  procedure  of  valua- 
tion, and  first  the  ethical  form  as  above  defined.  Bearing 
in  mind  that  we  are  not  concerned  with  cases  of  obedience 
to  authority  or  deference  to  conscience,  let  us  take  a  case  of 
genuine  moral  conflict  such  as  we  were  considering  some 
time  since.  Suppose  that  one  has  the  impulse  to  indulge  in 
some  form  of  amusement  which  he  has  been  in  the  habit  of 
considering  frivolous  or  absolutely  wrong.  The  end,  as  soon 
as  imaged,  or  rather  as  the  condition  of  its  being  imaged, 
encounters  past  habits  of  conduct  symbolized  by  standards  — 
standards  which  may  be  presented  under  a  variety  of  forms, 
a  maxim  learned  in  early  childhood,  the  ideal  of  a  Stoic 
sage  or  Christian  saint,  the  example  of  some  friend,  or  a  pre- 
cept put  in  abstract  terms,  but  which,  however  presented, 
are  essentially  symbolic  of  established  habits  of  thought  or 
action.^  Solution  of  such  a  problem  proceeds,  in  general, 
along  two  closely  interwoven  lines:  (1)  collation  and  com- 
parison of  cases  recognized  as  conforming  to  the  standard, 

1  The  relation  of  the  empirical  self  to  the  "  energetic  "  and  to  standards  will 
come  in  for  statement  in  Part  V  in  the  connection  just  referred  to. 

2  It  might  be  possible  to  construct  a  "  logic  "  of  those  various  types  of  working 
moral  standard  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  that  in  each  type  there  is  implied  the  one 
next  higher  morphologically,  and  ultimately  the  highest  —  that  is,  some  sort  of  con- 
cept of  the  "  energetic  "  self. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  297 

with  a  view  to  determining  the  standard  type  of  conduct  in 
a  less  ambiguous  way,  and  (2)  definition  of  the  relations 
between  this  type  of  conduct  and  other  recognized  types  in 
the  catalogue  of  virtues. 

Now,  these  two  movements  are  in  fact  inseparable,  for, 
without  reference  to  the  entire  system  of  virtues  of  which 
the  one  now  asserting  itself  is  a  member,  the  comparison  of 
cases  with  a  view  to  definition  of  the  virtue  would  be  blind 
and  hopeless  of  any  outcome.  The  agent  in  the  case  before 
us  desires  to  be  temperate  in  amusement  and  to  make  profit- 
able use  of  leisure  time,  but  after  all  he  may  wonder  whether 
these  ideals  really  require  the  austerities  of  certain  mediaeval 
saints  or  the  Stoic  apathy.  The  saint'  feats  of  spiritual 
athletics  may  have  served  a  useful  purpose,  in  ruder  times, 
as  evidence  of  human  power  to  lead  a  virtuous  and  thought- 
ful life,  but  can  such  self-denial  now  be  required  of  the 
moral  man?  It  is  apparent,  in  short,  that  the  superficially 
conceived  ideal  must  be  analyzed.  We  must  consider  the 
"spirit"  of  our  saint  or  hero,  not  the  letter  of  his  conduct, 
as  we  say,  and  in  interpreting  it  make  due  allowance  for  the 
conditions  of  the  time  in  which  he  lived  and  the  grade  of 
general  intelligence  of  those  he  sought  to  edify.  Whether 
our  standard  is  a  person  or  a  parable  or  an  abstractly  formu- 
lated precept,  the  logic  of  the  situation  is  the  same  in  every 
case  of  judgment.  The  analysis  of  a  standard  cannot  pro- 
ceed without  the  "synthesis"  or  co-ordination  of  the  type  of 
conduct  thereby  defined  with  other  distinguishable  recog- 
nized types  of  conduct  into  a  comprehensive  ideal  of  life  as 
a  whole.  In  the  last  resort  the  implicit  relations  of  all  the  ' 
virtues  will  be  made  explicit  in  the  process  of  defining  accu- 
rately any  one  of  them. 

In  the  last  resort,  then,  the  predicate  of  the  ethical  judg- 
ment is  the  whole  system  of  the  recognized  habits  of  the 
agent,  and  each  judgment -process  is  in  its  outcome  a  read- 


298  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 


justment  of  the  system  to  accommodate  the  new  habit  that 
has  been  seeking  admission.  Both  the  old  habits  and  the 
new  impulse  have  been  modified  in  the  process  just  as  the 
intension  of  a  class  term  and  the  particular  "subsumed" 
under  the  class  are  reciprocally  modified  in  the  ordinary  judg- 
ment of  sense-perception.  We  are  once  more  able  to  see 
that  the  process  of  ethical  judgment  or  valuation  is  not  a  pro- 
cess of  subsumption  or  classification,  of  ascertaining  the  value 
of  particular  modes  of  conduct,  but  on  the  contrary  a  process 
of  determining  or  assigning  value.  Each  judgment  process 
means  a  new  and  more  or  less  thoroughgoing  redetermina- 
tion of  the  self  and  hence  a  fixation  of  the  ethical  value  of 
the  conduct  whose  emergence  as  a  purpose  gave  rise  to  the 
process.  The  moral  experience  is  not  essentially  and  in  its 
typical  emergencies  a  recognition  of  values  with  a  view  to 
shaping  one's  course  accordingly,  but  rather  a  determining 
or  a  fixation  of  values  which  shall  serve  for  the  time  being, 
but  be  subject  at  all  times  to  re-appraisal. 

If  the  present  discussion  were  primarily  intended  as  a 
contribution  to  general  ethical  theory,  it  would  be  a  part  of 
our  purpose  to  show  in  detail  that  any  formulation  of  an 
ethical  ideal  in  contentual  "material"  terms  must  always  be 
inadequate  for  practical  purposes  and  hence  theoretically 
indefensible.  This,  as  we  believe,  could  be  shown  true  of  the 
popularly  current  ideal  of  self-realization  as  well  as  of  hedon- 
ism in  its  various  forms  and  the  older  systems  of  conscience 
or  the  moral  sense.  These  all  are  essentially  fixed  ideals 
admitting  of  more  or  less  complete  specification  in  point 
of  content  and  regarded  as  tests  or  canons  by  appeal  to 
which  the  moral  quality  of  any  concrete  act  can  be  deduct- 
ively ascertained.  They  are  the  ethical  analogues  of  such 
metaphysical  principles  as  the  Cartesian  God  or  the  Sub- 
stance of  Spinoza,  and  the  logic  implied  in  regarding  them 
as  adequate  standards  for  the  valuation  of  conduct  is  the 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  299 

logic  whereby  the  Rationalist  sought  to  deduce  from  con- 
cepts the  world  of  particular  things.  The  present  desidera- 
tum in  ethical  theory  would  appear  to  be,  not  further  attempts 
at  definition  of  a  moral  ideal  of  any  sort,  but  the  development 
of  a  logical  method  for  the  valuation  of  ideals  and  ends  in 
which  the  results  of  more  modern  researches  in  the  theory  of 
knowledge  should  be  made  use  of — in  which  the  concept  of 
self  should  play  the  part,  not  of  the  concept  of  Substance  in 
a  rationalistic  metaphysics,'  but  of  such  a  principle  as  that  of 
the  conservation  of  energy,  for  example,  in  scientific  infer- 
ence.^ 

We  have,  then,  in  each  readjustment  of  the  activities  of 
the  self  a  reconstruction  in  knowledge  of  ethical  reality — a 
reconstruction  which  at  the  same  time  involves  the  assign- 
ment of  a  definite  value  to  the  new  mode  of  conduct  which 
has  been  worked  out  in  the  readjustment.  We  conclude,  then, 
that  the  ethical  experience  is  one  of  continuous  construction 
and  reconstruction  of  an  order  of  objective  reality,  within 
which  the  world  of  sense-perception  is  comprised  as  the  world 
of  more  or  less  refractory  means  to  the  attainment  of  ethical 
purposes.  In  this  process  of  construction  of  ethical  reality 
current  moral  standards  play  the  same  part  as  concepts 
already  defined — that  is  to  say,  the  agent's  present  habits — 

lit  matters  not  at  all  whether,  in  ethics  or  metaphysics,  our  universal  be 
abstract  or  on  the  other  hand  "concrete,"  like  Green's  conception  of  the  self,  or  a 
"  Hegelian  "  Absolute.  Its  logical  use  in  the  determination  of  particulars  must  be 
essentially  the  same  in  either  case. 

2  In  this  connection  reference  may  be  made  to  Mr.  Taylor's  recent  work.  The 
Problevi  of  Conduct.  Mr.  Taylor  reduces  the  moral  life  to  terms  of  an  ultimate  con- 
flict between  the  ideals  of  egoism  and  social  justice,  holding  that  the  conflict  is  in 
theory  irreconcilable.  With  this  negative  attitude  toward  current  standards  in 
ethical  theory  one  may  well  be  in  accord  without  accepting  Mr.  Taylor's  further  con- 
tention that  a  theory  of  ethics  is  therefore  impossible.  Because  the  "  ethics  of  sub- 
sumption"  is  demonstrably  futile  it  by  no  means  follows  that  a  method  of  ethics 
cannot  be  developed  along  the  lines  of  modern  scientific  logic  which  shall  be  as  valid 
as  the  procedure  of  the  investigator  in  the  sciences.  Mr.  Taylor's  logic  is  virtually 
the  same  as  that  of  the  ethical  theories  which  he  criticises  ;  because  an  ethical  ideal 
is  impossible,  a  theory  of  ethics  is  impossible  also.  One  is  reminded  of  Mr.  Brad- 
ley's criticism  of  knowledge  in  the  closing  chapters  of  the  Logic  as  an  interesting 
parallel. 


300  Studies  in  Logical  Theoby 


do  in  the  typical  judgment  of  sense-perception.  They  play 
the  part  of  symbols  suggestive  of  recognized  and  heretofore 
habitual  modes  of  action  with  reference  to  conduct  of  the 
type  of  the  particular  instance  that  is  u,nder  consideration, 
serving  thus  to  bring  to  bear  upon  the  subject  of  the  judg- 
ment sooner  or  later  the  entire  moral  self.  The  outcome  is 
a  new  self,  and  so  for  the  future  a  new  standard,  in  which 
the  past  self  as  represented  by  the  former  standard  and  the 
new  impulse  have  been  brought  to  mutual  adjustment.  Our 
position  is  that  this  adjustment  is  essentially  experimental 
and  that  in  it  the  general  principle  of  the  unity  and  expan- 
sion of  the  self  must  be  presupposed,  as  in  inductive  infer- 
ence general  principles  of  teleology,  of  the  conservation  of 
energy,  and  of  organic  interconnection  of  parts  in  living 
things  are  presupposed.  The  unity  and  increase  of  the  self 
is  not  a  test  or  canon,  but  a  principle  of  moral  experimenta- 
tion.' 

Finally,  we  must  note  one  further  parallel  between  ethical 
judgment  and  the  judgment  of  sense-perception  and  science. 
However  the  man  of  science  may,  as  a  nominalist,  regard 
the  laws  of  nature  as  mere  observed  uniformities  of  fact  and 
particulars  as  the  true  realities,  these  same  laws  will  never- 
theless on  occasion  have  a  distinctly  objective  character  in 
his  actual  apprehension  of  them.  The  stubbornness  with 
which  a  certain  material  may  refuse  to  lend  itself  to  a 
desired  purpose  will  commonly  be  reinforced,  as  a  matter  of 
apprehension,  by  one's  recognition  of  the  "scientific  neces- 
sity" of  the  phenomenon.  As  offering  resistance  the  thing 
itself,  as  we  have  seen,  becomes  objective;  so  also  does  the 
law  of  which  this  case  may  be  recognized  as  only  a  particu- 
lar example — and  the  other  type  of  objectivity  experience 
we  need  not  here  do  more  than  mention  as  likewise  possible 

1  Mr.  Bosanquet's  discussion  of  the  place  of  the  principle  of  teleology  in  ana- 
logical inference  will  be  found  suggestive  in  this  connection  (Logic,  Vol.  II, 
chap.  iii). 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  301 

in  one's  apprehension  of  the  law  as  well  as  of  the  "facts" 
of  nature.  Both  types  of  objectivity  attach  to  the  moral  law 
as  well.  The  standard  that  restrains  is  one  "above"  us  or 
"beyond"  us.  Even  Kant,  as  the  similitude  of  the  starry 
heavens  would  suggest,  was  not  incapable  of  a  faint  "emo- 
tion of  the  heterononious,"  and  authority  in  one  form  or 
another  is  a  moral  force  whose  objective  validity  as  moral, 
both  in  its  inhibiting  and  in  its  sanctioning  aspects,  human 
nature  is  prone  to  acknowledge.  The  apprehension  of 
objectivity  is  everywhere,  as  we  have  held,  emotional.  One 
type  of  situation  in  which  the  moral  law  takes  on  this  char- 
acter is  found  in  the  interposition  of  the  law  to  check  a  for- 
ward tendency ;  the  other  is  found  in  the  instant  of  transition 
from  doubt  to  the  new  adjustment  that  has  been  reached. 
In  the  one  case  the  law  is  "inexorable"  in  its  demands.  In 
the  other  case  there  are  two  possibilities:  If  the  adjustment 
has  been  essentially  a  rejection  of  the  new  "temptation," 
the  law  which  one  obeys  is  one  no  longer  inexorable,  but 
sustaining,  as  a  rock  of  salvation.  If  the  adjustment  is  a 
distinctly  new  attitude,  the  sense  of  the  objectivity  of  the 
principle  embodied  in  it  will  commonly  be  less  strong,  if  not 
for  the  time  being  almost  wholly  wanting ;  but  in  the  mo- 
ment of  overt  action  it  will  in  some  degree  wear  the  charac- 
ter of  a  firm  truth  upon  which  one  has  taken  his  stand. 

This  general  view  of  the  logical  constitution  of  the  moral 
experience  may  suggest  a  comparison  with  the  fundamental 
doctrine  of  the  British  Intellectualist  school.  The  Intellec- 
tualist  writers  were  very  largely  guided  in  their  expositions 
by  the  desire  of  refuting  on  the  one  hand  Hobbes  and  on 
the  other  Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson.  Against  Hobbes 
they  wished  to  establish  the  obligatory  character  of  the 
moral  law  entirely  apart  from  sanction  or  enactment  by 
political  authority.  Against  the  Sentimentalists  they  wished 
to  vindicate  its  objectivity  and  permanence.     This  twofold 


302  Studies  in  Logical  Theoby 

purpose  they  accomplished  by  holding  that  the  morality  of 
conduct  lies  in  its  conformity  to  the  "objective  nature  of 
things,"  the  knowledge  of  which,  in  its  moral  aspects,  is 
logically  deducible  from  certain  moral  axioms,  self-evident 
like  those  of  mathematics.  Now  this  mathematical  analogy 
is  the  key  to  the  whole  position  of  the  Intellectualist  writers. 
By  so  conceiving  the  nature  of  knowledge  these  men  seri- 
ously weakened  their  strong  general  position.  Mathematics 
is  just  that  species  of  knowledge  which  is  most  remote  from 
and  apparently  independent  of  any  reference  to  conduct,  and 
the  Intellectualists,  by  choosing  it  as  their  ideal,  were 
thereby  rendered  incapable  of  explaining  the  obligatoriness 
of  the  moral  law.  An  adequate  psychology  of  knowledge 
would  have  obviated  this  difficulty  in  their  system. 

The  occasion  for  economic  judgment  is  given,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  a  conflict  between  ends  not  incompatible,  in  view  of 
any  ascertainable  conditions  of  the  agent's  nature  as  an 
empirical  self,  but  inhibitory  of  each  other  in  view  of  what 
we  have  described  as  conditions  external  to  the  agent.  Thus 
the  lawyer  in  our  illustration  found  his  plan  of  compromise 
thwarted  by  the  existence  of  such  sociological  conditions  as 
would  make  the  practice  of  his  profession,  in  the  manner 
intended,  impossible,  and  so  cut  off  his  income.  Similarly 
the  peasant  in  a  European  country  finds  that  (for  reasons 
which,  more  probably,  he  does  not  understand)  he  can  no 
longer  earn  a  living  in  the  accustomed  way,  and  emigrates 
to  a  country  in  which  his  capital  and  his  physical  energies 
may  be  more  profitably  employed.  So  also  in  the  everyday 
lives  of  all  of  us  ends  and  interests  quite  disparate,  so  far  as 
any  relation  to  each  other  through  our  psychical  capacities 
is  concerned,  stand  very  frequently  in  opposition,  neverthe- 
less, and  calling  for  adjustment.  We  must  make  a  choice 
between  amusement  or  intellectual  pursuits  or  the  means  of 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  303 

aesthetic  culture,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  common  necessa- 
ries of  life  on  the  other,  and  the  difficulty  of  the  situation 
lies  just  in  absence  of  any  sort  of  "spiritual  affinity"  be- 
tween these  ends.  There  is  no  necessary  ratio  between  the 
satisfaction  of  the  common  needs  of  life  and  the  cultivation 
of  the  higher  faculties — no  ratio  for  which  the  individual 
can  ever  find  a  sanction  in  the  constitution  of  his  empirical 
self  through  the  direct  method  of  ethical  valuation.  The 
common  needs  must  have  their  measure  of  recognition,  but 
no  attempted  ethical  valuation  of  them  can  ever  come  to  a 
result  convincingly  warranted  to  the  "energetic"  self  by 
psychological  conditions.  The  economic  situation  as  such  is 
in  this  sense  (that  is,  from  the  standpoint  of  any  recognized 
ethical  standards)  unintelligible.  It  is  this  ethical  unintelli- 
gibility  that  often  lends  a  genuine  element  of  tragedy  to 
situations  which  press  urgently  and  in  which  the  ends  at 
issue  are  of  great  ethical  moment.  It  is  no  small  matter  to 
the  emigrant,  for  example,  that  he  must  cut  the  very 
roots  by  which  he  has  grown  to  the  sort  of  man  he  finds 
himself  to  be.  His  whole  nature  protests  against  this 
violence,  and  questions  its  necessity,  though  the  necessity  is 
unmistakable  and  it  would  be  quite  impossible  for  him  not 
to  act  accordingly.  Nevertheless,  tragic  as  such  a  conflict 
may  well  be,  it  does  not  differ  in  any  logically  essential  way, 
does  not  differ  in  its  degree  of  strictly  logical  difficulty,  from 
the  ethically  much  less  serious  economic  problems  of  our 
everyday  life. 

Now,  we  have  already  defined  the  economic  act  for  which 
economic  judgment  is  preparatory  as  being,  in  general  terms, 
the  diversion  of  certain  means  from  a  present  use  to  which 
they  have  been  devoted  to  a  new  use  which  has  come  to  seem 
in  a  general  way  desirable.^  Thus,  in  the  cases  just  men- 
tioned, the  lawyer  contemplates  the  virtual  purchase  of  his 

1  See  above,  p.  2i3  and  p.  259  ad  fin. 


304  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

new  career  by  the  income  which  his  profession  might  in 
years  to  come  afford  him,  the  emigrant  seeks  a  better  market 
for  his  labor,  and  the  pleasure-seeker  and  the  ambitious  student 
and  the  buyer  of  a  commodity  in  the  market  propose  to  them- 
selves, each  one,  the  diversion  from  some  hitherto  intended 
use  of  a  sum  of  money.  Manifestly  it  is  immaterial  from 
our  logical  point  of  view  whether  the  means  in  question 
which  one  proposes  to  apply  in  some  new  way  are  in  the 
nature  of  physical  and  mental  strength,  or  materials  and 
implements  of  manufacture  ready  to  be  used,  or  means  of 
purchase  of  some  sort  wherewith  the  desired  service  or  com- 
modity may  be  obtained  at  once.  The  economic  problem,  to 
state  it  technically,  is  the  problem  of  the  reapplicability  of 
the  means,  interpreting  the  category  of  means  quite  broadly. 

In  a  word,  then,  the  method  of  procedure  adapted  to  the 
economic  type  of  situation  is  that  of  valuation  of  the  means, , 
not  that  of  direct  valuation  of  the  ends.  This  method  is  one 
of  valuation  since,  like  the  ethical  method,  it  is  determina- 
tive of  a  purpose,  but  it  accomplishes  this  result  in  its  own 
distinctive  way.  The  problem  of  our  present  analysis  will 
accordingly  be  how  this  method  of  valuation  of  the  means 
is  able  to  help  toward  an  adjustment  of  disparate  or  unre- 
lated ends  which  the  ethical  method  is  inadequate  to  effect. 

Let  us  assume  that  a  vague  purpose  of  foreign  travel,  for 
example,  has  presented  itself  in  imagination,  and  that  the 
preliminary  stage  of  ethical  judgment  has  been  passed 
through,  with  the  result  that  the  purpose,  in  a  more  definite 
form  than  it  could  have  at  first,  is  now  ready  for  economic 
consideration.  In  the  first  place  the  cost  of  the  journey 
must  be  determined,  and  this  step,  in  terms  of  our  present 
point  of  view,  is  simply  a  methodological  device  whereby 
certain  ends  which  the  standards  involved  in  the  stage  of 
ethical  judgment  could  not  suggest  or  could  not  effectually 
take  into  co-operation  with  themselves  in  their  determination 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  305 

of  the  end  are  brought  into  play.  Ascertaining  the  means 
suggests  these  disparate  ends,  these  established  modes  of 
use  of  the  means,  with  the  result  that  the  agent's  "forward 
tendency"  is  checked.  Shall  the  necessary  sums  be  spent 
in  foreign  travel  or  shall  they  be  spent  in  the  present  ways — 
in  providing  various  physical  necessities  and  comforts,  or 
for  various  forms  of  amusement,  or  in  increasing  investments 
in  business  enterprises?  These  modes  of  use  do  not  admit 
of  ethical  comparison  with  the  plan  of  foreign  travel,  and 
the  agent's  interest  must  therefore  now  be  centered  on  the 
means. 

It  is  in  this  check  to  the  agent's  forward  tendency  that  the 
logical  status  of  the  means  is  evinced.  As  merely  so  much 
money  the  means  could  only  serve  to  further  the  execution 
of  the  purpose  that  is  forming,  since  under  the  circumstances 
it  could  only  prompt  immediate  expenditure.  Like  the  subject 
in  factual  judgment,  the  means  in  economic  judgment  have 
their  problematic  aspect  which  as  effectually  hinders  the 
desired  use  of  them  as  could  any  palpable  physical  defect. 
This  problematic  aspect  consists  in  the  fact  of  the  present 
established  mode  of  use  which  the  now-forming  purpose 
threatens  to  disturb,  and  it  is  the  agent's  interest  in  this  mode 
of  use  that  turns  his  attention  to  the  valuation  of  the  means. 

It  need  hardly  be  pointed  out  that  in  the  economic  life 
we  find  situations  exactly  corresponding  to  those  of  "con- 
science and  temptation"  and  mechanical  "pull  and  haul" 
which  were  discriminated  in  the  ethical  sphere  and  marked 
off  from  judgment  properly  so  called.  Indeed  it  seems 
reasonable  to  think,  on  general  grounds  of  introspection,  that 
these  methods  of  decision  (if  they  deserve  the  name)  are, 
relatively  speaking,  more  frequently  relied  upon  in  the  eco- 
nomic than  in  the  moral  life.  The  economic  method  of  true 
judgment  is  roundabout  and  more  complex  and  more  difficult 
than  ethical,  and  involves  a  more  express  recourse  to  those 


306  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

abstract  conceptions  which  for  the  most  part  are  only  im- 
plicitly involved  in  valuation  of  the  other  type.  The  economic 
type  of  valuation,  in  fact,  differs  from  the  ethical,  not  in  an 
absolute  or  essential  way,  but  rather  in  the  explicitness  with 
which  it  brings  to  light  and  lays  bare  the  vital  elements  in 
valuation  as  such.  In  general,  then,  the  economic  process 
would  seem  necessarily  to  embrace  three  stages,  which  will  first 
of  all  be  enumerated  and  then  very  briefly  explained  and  dis- 
cussed. These  are:  (1)  a  preliminary  consideration  of  the 
means  necessary  to  attain  the  end  —  which  must  be  vague  and 
tentative,  of  course,  for  the  reason  that  the  end  as  imagined 
is  so,  as  compared  with  the  fulness  of  detail  which  must  belong 
to  it  before  it  can  be  finally  accepted;  (2)  a  consideration 
of  the  means,  as  thus  provisionally  taken,  in  the  light  of  their 
present  devotion  to  other  purposes,  this  present  devotion 
of  them  being  the  outcome,  in  some  degree  at  least,  of  past 
valuation;  (3)  final  definition  of  the  means  with  reference 
to  the  proposed  use  through  an  adjustment  effected  between 
this  and  the  factors  involved  in  the  past  valuation. 

1.  In  the  first  stage  as  throughout,  it  must  be  carefully 
noted,  the  means  are  under  consideration  not  primarily  in 
their  physical  aspect,  but  simply  as  subject  to  a  possible 
redisposition.  Thus  it  is  not  money  as  lawful  currency 
receivable  at  the  steamship  office  for  an  ocean  passage,  nor 
tools  and  materials  and  labor-power  technically  suitable  for 
the  production  of  a  desired  object,  that  is  the  subject  of  the 
economic  judgment.  The  problem  of  redisposition  would  of 
course  not  be  raised  were  the  means  not  technically  adapt- 
able to  the  purpose,  nor  on  the  other  hand  can  the  means  in 
the  course  of  economic  judgment,  as  a  rule,  escape  some 
measure  of  further  (factual)  inquiry  into  their  technical 
properties;  but  the  standpoints  are  nevertheless  distinct. 
Again,  it  must  be  noted  that  the  means  in  this  first  stage 
will  be  only  roughly  measured.     The  length  of  one's  stay 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  307 

abroad,  the  size  of  the  house  one  wishes  to  build,  the  purpose 
whatever  it  may  be,  is  still  undefined — these  are  in  fact  the 
very  matters  which  the  process  must  determine — and  in  the 
first  instance  it  is  "money  in  general"  or  "a  large  sum  of 
money"  with  reference  to  which  we  raise  the  economic 
problem.  The  category  of  quantity  is  in  fact  essentially  an 
economic  one ;  it  is  essentially  a  standpoint  for  determining 
the  means  of  action  in  such  a  way  as  to  facilitate  their  econo- 
mic valuation.  The  reader  familiar  with  the  writings  of  the 
Austrian  school  of  economists  will  easily  recall  how  uniformly 
in  their  discussions  of  the  principle  of  marginal  utility  these 
writers  assume  outright  in  the  first  place  the  division  of  the 
stock  of  goods  into  definite  units,  and  then  raise  the  question 
of  how  the  value  of  a  unit  is  measured.  The  stock  contains 
already  a  hundred  bushels  of  wheat  or  ten  loaves  of  bread — 
apparently  as  a  matter  of  metaphysical  necessity — whereas 
in  fact  the  essential  economic  problem  is  this  very  one  of 
how  "  wheat  at  large  "  comes  to  be  put  in  sacks  of  a  certain 
size  and  "  bread  in  general "  to  be  baked  in  twelve-ounce 
loaves.  The  subdivision  of  the  stock  and  the  valuation  of 
the  unit  are  not  successive  stages,  but  inseparably  correlative 
phases  of  the  valuation-process  as  a  whole.  The  outcome 
may  be  stated  either  way,  in  accordance  with  one's  interest 
in  the  situation. 

2.  But  the  unmeasured  means  as  redisposable  in  an  as  yet 
undetermined  way  bring  to  consciousness  established  meas- 
ured uses  to  which  the  means  have  been  heretofore  assigned 
in  definite  amounts.  In  this  way  the  process  of  determining 
a  definite  quantum  as  redisposable  (which  is  to  say,  of  attain- 
ing to  a  definite  acceptable  plan  of  conduct)  can  begin. 
How,  then,  does  this  fact  of  past  assignment  to  uses  still 
recognized  as  desirable  figure  in  the  situation?  In  the  first 
place  the  past  assignment  may  have  been  (1)  an  outcome  of 
past  economic  valuation,  (2)  an  unhesitating  or  non-economic 


308  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

act  executive  of  an  ethical  decision,  or  (3)  an  act  of  more  or 
less  conscious  obedience  to  "conscience"  or  "authority." 
In  either  case  it  now  stands  as  a  course  of  conduct  which  at 
the  time  was,  in  the  way  explained  above,  sanctioned  to  the 
agent,  to  the  "energetic"  self,  by  the  means  and  conditions 
recognized  as  bearing  upon  it.  In  this  sense,  then,  we  have, 
in  this  recognition  of  the  past  adjustment  and  of  the  eco- 
nomic character  which  the  means  now  have  in  virtue  of  it, 
what  we  may  term  a  judgment  of  "energy-equivalence" 
between  the  means  and  their  established  uses.  For  to  the 
agent  it  was  the  essential  meaning  of  the  sense  of  sanction 
felt  wh'en  the  means  were  assigned  to  these  uses  that  the 
"energetic"  self  would  on  the  whole  be  furthered  thereby 
— and  this  in  view  of  all  the  sacrifices  that  this  use  would 
entail,  or  in  view  of  the  sacrifices  required  for  the  production 
of  the  means,  if  the  case  were  one  in  which  the  means  were 
not  at  hand  and  could  only  be  secured  by  a  more  or  less 
extended  production  process. 

In  the  illustration  we  have  been  considering,  it  will  be 
observed,  there  is  an  extensive  schedule  of  present  uses 
which  the  new  project  calls  in  question  and  from  which  the 
means  must  be  diverted.  This  is  in  fact  the  commoner  case. 
A  new  use  of  money  will  affect,  as  a  rule,  not  simply  a  single 
present  mode  of  expenditure,  but  will  very  probably  involve 
a  readjustment  throughout  the  whole  schedule  of  expendi- 
ture which  our  separate  past  valuations  of  money  have  in 
effect  co-operated  in  establishing.  So  likewise  if  we  wish  to 
use  part  of  a  store  of  building  materials  or  of  food,  or  of  any 
other  subdivisible  commodity,  we  encounter  an  ordered  sys- 
tem of  consumption  rather  than  a  single  predetermined  use 
which  we  have  not  yet  enjoyed.  Where  this  is  the  case  the 
whole  process  of  valuation  is  greatly  facilitated,  but  this  is 
not  essential.  The  means  in  cases  of  true  economic  valua- 
tion may  be  capable  of  but  a  single  use,  like  a  railroad  ticket 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  309 

or  a  perishable  piece  of  fruit,  or  of  a  virtually  endless 
series  of  uses,  like  a  painting  or  a  literary  masterpiece. 
Whether  the  means  figure  as  representing  but  a  single  use  or 
stand  for  the  conservation  of  an  extensive  system,  their  econo- 
mic significance  is  the  same.  They  are  the  "  energy-equiva- 
lent" of  this  use  or  system  of  uses  considered  as  an  act  or 
system  of  acts  of  consumption  in  furtherance  of  the  self. 
Their  past  assignment  meant  then  and  means  now  simply 
this,  that  the  "energetic"  self  would  thereby  gain  more  than 
it  would  lose  through  the  inevitable  sacrifices.  This  is  the 
economic  significance  of  the  means  in  virtue  of  which  they 
are  now  problematic  to  the  extent  of  checking,  for  a  time  at 
least,  forward  tendency  toward  the  desired  end.' 

3.  The  judgment  of  energy-equivalence,  then,  defines  the 
inhibiting  economic  aspect  of  the  means,  and  moreover  defines 
it  for  the  means  as  subdivided  and  set  apart  for  a  schedule  of 
uses  if  this  was  the  form  of  the  past  adjustments  to  which 
reference  is  made.  The  problem  of  the  third  stage  of  the 
process  is  that  of  "  bringing  subject  and  predicate  together," 
as  we  have  elsewhere  expressed  it  —  that  is,  of  determining, 
in  the  light  of  the  economic  character  of  the  means  as  just 
ascertained,  what  measure  of  satisfaction,  if  any,  may  be 
accorded  to  the  new  and  as  yet  undefined  desire.  The  new 
disposition  of  the  means,  if  one  is  to  be  made,  must  bring  to 
the  "energetic"  self  a  degree  of  furtherance  and  development 
which  shall  be  sensibly  as  great  as  would  come  from  the  estab- 
lished method  of  consumption.     The  means,  as  economic, 

iW^euse  the  expression  "  energy -equivalent'^  because  the  "excess"  gained  by 
the  self  through  the  past  adjustment  is  not  of  importance  at  just  this  point.  The 
essential  significance  of  the  means  now  is  not  that  they  "cost"  less  than  they  promised 
to  bring  in  in  energy,  but  that  because  they  required  sacrifice  the  self  will  now  lose 
unless  they  are  allowed  to  fulfil  the  promise.  They  are  the  logical  equivalent  of  the 
established  modes  of  consumption  from  the  standpoint  of  conservation  of  the 
energies  of  the  self,  not  the  mathematical  equivalent. 

It  would  be  desirable,  if  there  were  space,  to  present  a  brief  account  of  the 
psychological  basis  of  the  concepts  of  energy  and  energy-equivalence  which  here 
come  into  play,  but  this  must  be  omitted. 


310  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

are  means  to  the  conservation  of  the  old  adjustment,  and 
any  new  disposal  of  them  or  of  any  portion  of  them  for  a 
full  or  partial  execution  of  the  new  purpose  must  make  out 
at  least  as  good  a  case.  It  must  appear  that  the  new  dispo- 
sition is  not  only  physically  possible,  but  also  economically 
necessary  in  the  light  of  the  same  principle  of  expansion  of 
the  self  as  sanctioned  the  disposition  now  in  force.  It  must 
make  the  self  in  some  way  more  efficient — whether  more 
strong  and  symmetrical  in  body,  more  skilled  in  work,  more 
clear  of  brain,  or  more  efficient  in  whatever  other  concrete 
way  may  be  desired. 

Psychologically  the  sanction  of  any  course  of  action 
which  is  taken  as  evidence  of  conformity  to  the  general  rule 
thus  inadequately  stated  is  the  more  or  less  strong  sense  of 
"relaxation"  of  attentive  strain  which  comes  with  the  shift 
of  attention,  in  the  final  survey,  from  means  to  end.  We  may 
accordingly,  for  the  sake  of  greater  definiteness,  restate  in 
the  following  terms  the  process  which  has  just  been  sketched: 
The  ends  in  conflict  at  the  outset  are  ends  which  do  not 
sensibly  bear  upon  each  other  through  their  dependence 
upon  a  common  fund  of  psychical  capacities  or  energies. 
They  are  related  in  the  agent's  experience  solely  through 
their  dependence  upon  a  common  stock  of  physical  means, 
and  they  do  not  therefore  admit  of  adjustment  through 
the  ethical  type  of  process.  The  economic  process  consists 
essentially  of  a  revival  in  imagination  of  the  experiences 
accompanying  the  former  disposition  of  the  means  and  a 
re-enforcement  by  these  of  the  means  in  their  adherence  to 
that  former  and  still  recognized  disposition.  If  an  adapted 
form  of  the  new  end  can  be  imagined  which  will  mediate  a 
like  experience  of  relaxation  when  the  attention  shifts  from 
the  means,  thus  emotionally  re-enforced  in  their  economic 
status,  to  the  end  as  thus  conceived,  the  means  will  be  recog- 
nized as  economically  redisposable.     Thus  the  method  of 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  311 

valuation  of  the  means  makes  possible,  through  appeal  to  the 
sensibly  invariable  experience  of  relaxation  or  assurance  in 
the  outcome  of  judgment,  a  co-ordination  of  disparate  ends 
which  the  ethical  method  of  direct  adjustment  could  not 
effect/ 

The  economic  process  thus  presents  on  analysis  the  same 
factors  as  does  the  ethical.  On  the  subject  side  we  have  the 
means — which  as  economic  are  problematic  as  to  their  reap- 
plicability.  On  the  predicate  side  we  have  the  suggested 
mode  of  reapplication  in  tension  against  conservative  ideals 
of  application  to  established  purposes.  Just  as  it  may  be 
held  that  the  general  ethical  predicate  is  that  of  Right  or 
Good — that  is,  deserving  of  adoption  into  the  system  of 
one's  ends — so  the  economic  predicate  applied  to  the  means 
as  these  come  in  the  end  to  be  defined  is  the  general  con- 
cept Reappliable.  And  in  general  the  distinction  of  the 
types  is  not  an  ultimate  one,  for  the  more  deliberately  and 
rigorously  the  method  of  economic  valuation  is  pursued  — 
in  such  a  case,  for  example,  as  that  of  the  prospective  emigrant 
—  the  stronger  will  be  the  agent's  sense  of  a  genuinely 
ethical  sanction  as  belonging  to  the  decision  which  is  in  the 
end  worked  out.  The  more  certain  and  sincere,  therefore, 
will  be  the  agent's  judgment  that  the  means  must  be  reap- 
plied, for  on  the  sense  of  sanction  of  which  we  speak  rests 
the  explicit  judgment  that  the  purpose  formed  is  expansive 
of  the  self. 

From  the  analysis  thus  presented  it  must  appear,  there- 
fore, that  the  economic  type  of  judgment  is  in  our  sense  a 
constructive  process.  Its  function  is  to  determine  a  particu- 
lar commodity  or  portion  of  a  stock  of  some  commodity  in 
its  economic  character  as  disposable,  and  in  performing 
this  function  it  presents  a  definite  reality  in  the  economic 

1  Putting  it  negatively,  the  renunciation  of  the  new  end  involves  a  "  greater  " 
sacrifice  than  all  the  sacrifices  which  adherence  to  the  present  system  of  consump- 
tion can  compensate. 


312  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

order.  Moreover,  in  thus  defining  the  particular,  recourse  is 
had  to  more  or  less  distinctively  namable  economic  standards 
vsrhich  are  in  the  last  resort  symbols  representing  established 
habits  of  consumption  in  the  light  of  which  the  means, 
prima  facie,  seem  not  to  be  available  for  any  other  purposes. 
These  economic  standards,  like  ethical  standards  and  the 
class  concepts  of  science  and  our  ordinary  perceptual  experi- 
ence, are,  with  all  due  respect  to  nominalism,  constitutive  of 
a  real  world — a  world  which  is  real  because  it  lends  form  and 
significance  to  our  knowledge  of  particulars  as  stimuli  to 
conduct. 

We  have  now  before  us  sufficient  reason  for  our  thesis 
that  the  valuation -process  in  both  its  forms  is  constructive 
of  an  order  of  reality,  and  we  have  sufficiently  explained  the 
relation  which  the  economic  order  bears  to  the  inclusive  and 
logically  prior  order  of  ethical  objects  and  relations.  We  are 
now  in  a  position  to  see  that  in  being  thus  constructive  of 
reality  (taking  the  conception  in  its  proper  functional  mean- 
ing) they  are  at  the  same  time  constructive  of  the  self,  since 
the  reality  which  they  construct  is  in  its  functional  aspect 
the  assemblage  of  means  and  conditions,  of  stimuli,  in  short, 
/  for  the  development  and  expansion  of  the  self.     We  shall 

bring  this  main  division  of  our  study  to  a  close  with  a  series 
^  of  remarks  in  explanation  and  illustration  of  this  view. 

Let  us  consider  once  more  the  factors  present  in  the 
agent's  final  survey  of  the  situation  after  the  completion  of 
the  judgment -process  and  on  the  verge  of  action.  These 
factors  are,  as  we  have  seen,  (1)  recognition  of  conditions 
sanctioning  the  purpose  formed,  (2)  recognition  of  the  pur- 
pose as,  in  view  of  this  sanction,  warranted  to  the  "energetic" 
self  as  an  eligible  method  of  expansion  and  development,  and 
(3)  recognition  of  the  "energetic"  self,  conversely,  as  in 
possession,  in  virtue  of  the  favorable  conditions  given  in 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  313 


factual  judgment,  of  this  new  method  of  furtherance.  These 
three  factors  are  manifestly  not  so  much  factors  co-operating 
in  the  situation  as  inseparable  aspects  of  it  distinguishable 
from  each  other  and  admitting  of  discriminative  emphasis  in 
accordance  with  the  degree  of  reflective  power  which  the 
individual  may  possess  or  choose  to  exercise.  Strictly  speak- 
ing these  three  aspects  are  present  in  every  conscious  recog- 
nition of  a  purpose  as  one's  own  and  as  presently  to  be 
carried  into  effect,  but  they  are  not  always  present  in  equal 
conspicuousness,  and  never  with  equal  logical  importance  for 
the  individual.  In  fact  this  enumeration  of  aspects  coincides 
with  our  enumeration  of  the  three  stages  in  the  evolution  of 
the  individual's  conscious  moral  attitude  toward  new  pur- 
poses given  in  impulse — in  the  third  of  which  the  last 
named  of  these  aspects  comes  to  the  fore  with  the  others  in 
logical  or  functional  subordination  to  it. 

Now  it  will  be  apparent  on  grounds  of  logic,  as  on  the 
evidence  of  simple  introspection,  that  in  this  third  type  of 
attitude — in  the  attitude  of  true  valuation,  that  is  to  say — 
the  energetic  self  cannot  be  indentified  with  the  chosen  pur- 
pose. The  purpose  is  a  determinate  specified  act  to  be  per- 
formed subject  to  recognized  conditions,  and  with  the  use  of 
the  co-ordinated  means;  the  self,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  pro- 
cess to  which  this  particular  purpose  is,  indeed,  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  self's  conservation  and  increase,  indispen- 
sable, but  which  is  nevertheless  apart  from  the  purpose  in 
the  sense  that  without  the  purpose  it  would  still  be  a  self, 
though  perhaps  a  narrower  and  less '  developed  one.  Our 
standpoint  here  as  elsewhere,  the  reader  must  remember,  is 
the  logical.  It  is  the  standpoint  of  the  agent's  own  inter- 
pretation of  his  experience  of  judgment  during  the  judgment- 
process  and  at  its  close,  and  not  the  standpoint  of  the  psy- 
chological mediation  of  this  experience  as  a  series  of  occur- 
rences.     Thus  we  are  here  far  from  wishing  to  deny  the 


314  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

general  proposition  that  a  man's  purposes  are  an  expression  | 
of  his  nature,  as  the  psychologist  might  describe  it,  or  the 
proposition  that  a  man's  conduct  and  his  character  are  one 
and  the  same  thing  viewed  from  different  points  of  view.  We 
wish  merely  to  insist  upon  the  fact  that  these  psychological 
propositions  are  not  a  true  account  of  the  agent's  own  expe- 
rience of  himself  and  of  his  purposes  while  these  latter  are 
in  the  making  or  are  on  the  verge  of  execution.  There  is 
indeed  no  conflict  between  this  "inside  view"  of  the  judg- 
ment-process and  of  the  final  survey  and  the  psychological 
propositions  just  mentioned.  The  identity  of  conduct  and 
character  means  not  simply  that  as  the  man  is  so  does  he 
act,  but  quite  as  much,  and  in  a  more  important  way,  that  as 
he  acts  so  is  he  and  so  does  he  become.  It  is,  then,  the 
essence  of  the  agent's  own  view  of  the  situation  that  his 
character  is  in  the  making  and  that  the  purpose  is  the 
method  to  be  taken.  To  the  agent  the  self  is  not,  indeed, 
independent  of  the  purpose,  for  plainly  it  is  recognized  that 
upon  just  this  purpose  the  self  is,  in  the  sense  explained,  in 
a  vital  way  dependent.  Nevertheless  the  self  is  in  the 
agent's  apprehension  essentially  beyond  the  purpose,  and 
larger  than  the  purpose,  and  even,  we  may  say,  metaphysically 
apart  from  it.  Now  the  conclusion  which  we  wish  to  draw 
from  this  examination  of  the  agent's  attitude  in  judgment  is 
that  no  formulation  of  an  ideal  self  can  ever  be  adequate  to 
his  purposes,  not  simply  because  any  such  formulation  must, 
as  Green  allows,  inevitably  be  incomplete  and  inconsistent, 
but  because  the  self  as  a  process  is  in  the  agent's  own  appre- 
hension of  it  inherently  incapable  of  formulation.  Any 
formulation  that  might  be  attempted  must  be  in  terms  of 
particular  purposes  (since  in  a  modern  ethical  theory  the  self 
must  be  a  "concrete"  and  not  an  abstract  universal),  and  it 
is  easy  to  see  that  any  such  would  be,  to  the  agent  in  the 
attitude  of  true  ethical  judgment,  worse  than  useless.     It 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  315 

could  as  contentual  and  concrete  only  be  a  composite  of 
existing  standards,  more  or  less  coherently  put  together, 
offered  to  the  agent  as  a  substitute  for  the  new  standard 
which  he  is  trying  to  work  out.  If  there  were  not  need  of 
a  new  standard  there  would  be  no  judgment -process;  the 
agent  must  be,  to  say  the  least,  embarrassed,  even  if  the 
unwitting  imposture  does  not  deceive  him,  when  such  a  com- 
posite, useful  and  indeed  indispensable  in  its  proper  place  as 
a  standard  of  reference  and  a  source  of  suggestion,  is  urged 
upon  him  as  suitable  for  a  purpose  which  in  the  very  nature 
of  the  case  it  is  logically  incapable  of  serving.' 

To  the  agent,  then,  the  "energetic"  self  can  never  be 
represented  as  an  ideal — can  never  be  expressed  in  terms  of 
purpose — since  it  is  in  its  very  nature  logically  incongruous 
with  any  possible  particular  purpose  or  generalization  of 
such  purposes.  It  is  commonly  imaged  by  the  agent  in 
some  manner  of  sensuous  terms,  but  it  is  imaged,  in  so  far  as 
the  case  is  one  of  judgment  in  a  proper  sense,  for  use  as  a 
stimulus  to  the  methodical  process  of  valuation  —  not  as  a 
standard,  which  if  really  adequate  would  make  valuation 
unnecessary.  The  agent's  consciousness  of  himself  as  "en- 
ergetic" cannot  be  an  ideal;  it  comes  to  consciousness  only 
through  the  endeavor,  first  to  follow,  and  then,  in  a  later 
stage  of  moral  development,  to  use  ideals,  and  has  for  its 
function,  as  a  presentation,  the  incitement  of  the  process  of 
methodical  use  of  standards  in  the  control  of  the  agent's 

1  Green,  as  is  well  known,  allows  that  any  formulation  of  the  ideal  self  must  be 
incomplete,  but  holds  that  it  is  not  for  this  reason  useless.  But  this  is  to  assume 
that  development  in  the  ideal  is  never  to  be  radically  reconstructive,  that  the  ideal 
is  to  expand  and  fill  out  along  established  and  unchangeable  lines  of  growth  so  that  all 
increase  shall  be  in  the  nature  of  accretion.  The  self  as  a  system  is  fixed  and  all 
individual  moral  growth  is  in  the  nature  of  approximation  to  this  absolute  ideal. 
This  would  appear  to  be  essentially  identical  in  a  logical  sense  with  Mr.  Spencer's 
hypothesis  of  social  evolution  as  a  process  of  gradual  approach  to  a  condition  of 
perfect  adaptation  of  society  and  the  individual  to  each  other  in  an  environment  to 
which  society  is  perfectly  adapted  —  a  condition  in  which  "  perfectly  evolved  "  indi- 
viduals shall  live  in  a  state  of  blessedness  in  conformity  to  the  requirements  of 
"absolute  ethics."  For  a  criticism  of  this  latter  type  of  view  see  Mr.  Tayloe's 
above-mentioned  work  (chap.  \,  passim). 


316  Studies  in  Logical  Theok? 

impulsive  ends.  It  is  not  an  anticipatory  vision  of  the  final 
goal  of  life,  but  the  agent's  coming  to  consciousness  of  the 
general  impulse  and  movement  of  the  life  that  is. 

It  is  an  inevitable  consequence  of  acceptance  of  a  con- 
tentual  view  of  the  "energetic"  self  as  one's  ideal  that 
reflective  morality  should  tend  to  degenerate  into  an  intro- 
spective conscientiousness  constantly  in  unstable  equilibrium 
between  a  pharisaical  selfishness  on  the  one  hand  and  a  mor- 
ally scarcely  more  dangerous  hypocrisy  on  the  other.  There 
is  certainly  much  justice  in  the  stinging  characterization  of 
" Neo-Hegelian  Egoism"  which  Mr.  Taylor  somewhere  in 
his  unsearchable  book  applies  to  the  currently  prevailing 
conventionalized  type  of  idealistic  ethics.  If  the  self  of  the 
valuation-process  is  an  ultimate  goal  of  effort,  then  there 
must  certainly  be  an  irreconcilable  contrast  to  the  disadvantage 
of  the  latter  between  the  plain  man's  objective  desire  for  right 
conduct,  as  such,  and  for  the  welfare  of  his  fellow-beings, 
and  the  moralist's  anxious  questionings  of  the  rectitude  of 
the  motives  by  which  his  conformity  to  the  fixed  moral 
standard  is  prompted.*  Into  the  value  and  significance  of 
the  attitude  of  conscientious  examination  of  one's  moral  mo- 
tives we  are  not  here  concerned  to  inquire,  but  need  only 
insist,  in  accordance  with  our  present  view,  that  its  value 
must  be  distinctly  subordinate  and  incidental  to  the  general 
course  and  outcome  of  the  valuation-process.  In  the  valua- 
tion-process, consciousness  of  self  is  not  an  object  of  solici- 
tude, but  simply,  we  repeat,  a  pure  presentation  of  stimulus, 
havins:  for  its  office  the  incitement,  and  if  need  be  the  reincite- 
ment,  of  the  attitude  of  deference  to  the  suggestions  of  old 
standards  and  openness  to  the  petitions  of  new  impulse,  and 
of  methodically  bringing  these   to  bear  upon  each  other. 

1  For  Geeen's  cautious  defense  of  conscientiousness  as  a  moral  attitude  seethe 
Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  Book  IV,  chap,  i ;  and  for  a  statement  of  the  present  point 
of  view  as  bearing  upon  Green's  difficulty,  see  Dewey,  The  Study  of  Ethics:  A  Syl- 
labus, p.  37  ad  fin.,  and  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  II,  pp.  661,  662. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  317 

The  outcome  of  such  a  process,  of  course,  cannot  be  pre- 
dicted— and  for  the  same  reasons  as  make  unpredictable  the 
scientist's  factual  hypothesis.  Just  as  the  scientist's  data  are 
incomplete  and  ill-assorted  and  unorganized,  for  the  reason 
that  they  have,  of  necessity,  been  collected,  and  must  at  the 
outset  be  interpreted,  in  the  light  of  present  concepts,  whose 
inadequacy  the  very  existence  of  the  problem  at  issue  demon- 
strates, so  the  final  moral  purpose  that  shall  be  developed  is 
not  to  be  deduced  from  any  possible  inventory  of  the  situa- 
tion as  it  stands.  The  process  in  both  cases  is  one  of  recon- 
struction, and  the  test  of  the  validity  of  the  reconstruction 
must  in  both  cases  be  of  the  same  essentially  practical  char- 
acter. In  both  cases  the  process  is  constructive  of  reality, 
in  the  functional  signification  of  the  term.  In  both  the 
judgment  process  is  constructive  also  of  the  self,  in  the 
sense  that  upon  the  determination  of  the  agent's  future  atti- 
tude the  cumulative  outcome  of  his  past  attitudes  is  methodi- 
cally brought  to  bear.' 

V 

Judgments  of  value  are,  then,  objective  in  their  import  in 
the  same  sense  as  are  the  factual  judgments  in  which  the 
conditions  of  action  are  presented.  The  ideal  problematic  sit- 
uation is,  in  the  last  resort,  ethical,  in  the  sense  of  requiring 
for  its  solution  determination  of  the  new  end  that  has  arisen 
with  reference  to  existing  standards.  In  structure  and  in 
function  the  judgment  in  which  the  outcome  of  this  process 
is  presented  is  knowledge,  and  objective  in  the  only  valid 
acceptation  of  the  term. 

1  Along  the  line  thus  inadequately  suggested  might  be  found  an  answer  to  certain 
criticisms  of  the  attempt  to  dispense  with  a  metaphysical  idea  of  the  self.  Such 
criticisms  usually  urge  that  without  reference  to  a  metaphysical  ideal  no  moaning 
attaches  to  such  conceptions  as  "adjustment,"  "expansion,"  "furtherance,"  and 
the  like  as  predicated  of  the  moral  acts  of  an  agent  in  their  efifect  upon  the  "ener- 
getic" self.  Anything  that  one  may  do,  it  is  said,  is  expansive  of  the  self,  if  it  be 
something  new,  except  as  we  judge  it  by  a  metaphysical  ideal  of  a  rightly  expanded 
self.  For  an  excellent  statement  of  this  general  line  of  criticism  see  Steatton,  "A 
Psychological  Test  of  Virtue,"  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  Vol.  XI,  p.  200. 


318  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

But,  after  all,  it  may  be  urged,  is  it  not  the  essential 
mark  of  the  objective  that  it  should  be  accessible  to  all 
men,  and  not  in  the  nature  of  the  case  valid  for  only  a  single 
individual?  At  best  the  objectivity  of  content  which  has 
been  made  out  for  the  judgment  of  value  is  purely  functional, 
and  not  such  as  can  be  verified  by  appeal  to  the  consensus 
of  other  persons.  The  agent's  assurance  of  the  reality  of 
the  economic  or  ethical  subject-matter  which  he  is  endeavor- 
ing to  determine,  and  his  sense  of  the  objectivity  of  the 
results  ^v'hich  he  reaches,  need  not  be  denied.  These  may 
well  enough  be  illusions  of  personal  prejudice  or  passion,  or 
even  normal  illusions  of  the  reflective  faculty,  like  that  of 
interpreting  the  secondary  qualities  of  bodies  as  objective  in 
the  same  sense  as  are  the  "bulk,  figure,  extension,  number, 
and  motion  of  their  solid  parts.'"  Any  man  can  see  the 
physical  object  to  which  I  point,  and  verify  with  his  own  eyes 
the  qualities  which  I  ascribe  to  it,  but  no  man  can  either 
understand  or  verify  my  judgment  that  the  purpose  I  have 
formed  is  in  accord  with  rational  ideals  of  industry  and  self- 
denial,  or  that  this  portion  of  my  winter's  fuel  may  be  given 
to  a  neighbor  who  has  none. 

But  this  line  of  objection  proves  too  much,  for,  made 
consistent  with  itself,  it  really  amounts  to  a  denial  that  the 
very  judgment  of  sense-perception,  to  which  it  appeals  so 
confidently  as  a  criterion,  has  objective  import.  The  first 
division  of  this  study  was  intended  to  show  that  every  object 

1  The  polemic  of  certain  recent  writers  (as,  for  example,  Eheenfels  in  his  Sys- 
tem der  Werttheorie)  against  the  objectivity  of  judgments  of  value  appears  to  rest 
upon  an  uncritical  acceptance  of  the  time-honored  distinction  between  "primary" 
and  "secondary"  qualities  as  equivalent  to  the  logical  distinction  of  subjective 
and  objective.  Thus  Eheenfels  confutes  "das  Vorurteil  von  der  objectiven 
Bedeutung  des  WertbegrifEes"  by  explaining  it  as  due  to  a  misleading  usage  of  speech 
expressive  of  "an  impulse,  deep-rooted  in  the  human  understanding,  to  objectify 
its  presentations"  and  tnen  goes  on  to  say  "We  do  not  desire  things  because  wo 
recognize  the  presence  in  them  of  a  mysterious  impalpable  essence  of  Value  but  we 
ascribe  value  to  them  because  we  desire  them."  (Op.  cit.,  Bd.  I,  p.  2.)  This  may  serve 
to  illustrate  the  easy  possibility  of  confusing  the  logical  and  psychological  points  of 
view,  as  likewise  does  Eheenfels's  formal  definition  of  value.    (Bd.  I.,  p.  65.) 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  319 

in  the  experience   of  each   individual  is  for  the  individual  a 
unique  construction  of  his  own,  determined  in  form  and  in 
details  by  individual  interests  and  purposes,  and  therefore 
different  from  that  object  in  the   experience  of  any  other 
individual  which    in   social    intercourse    passes   current    as 
the    same.     The  real    object    is    for    me    the  object  which 
functions  in  my  experience,  presenting  problematic  aspects 
for   solution,    and    lending    itself    more    or   less    service- 
ably  to  my  purposes;  and  this  object  is,  we   hold,  not  the 
object  as  socially  current,  but  the  unique  object  which,  as 
undergoing   determination   with   reference    to    my    unique 
purposes,  cannot  possibly  have  social  currency.     The  objec- 
tion as  stated  cuts  away  the  very  ground  on  which  it  rests, 
since  the  shortcoming  which  it  finds  in  the  judgment  of 
ethical  or  economic  value  is  present  in  the  particular  judg- 
ment of  sense-perception  also.     The  object  about  which  I 
can  assure  myself  by  an  immediate  appeal  to  other  persons 
is  the  object  in  its  bare    "  conceptual "  aspects  —  the  object 
as  a  dictionary  might  define  it,  the  commodity  as  it  might 
be  described  in  a  trade  catalogue,  or  the  ethical  act  as  defined 
by  the  criminal  code  or  in  the  treatise  of  a  moral  philoso- 
pher.    It  is  an  object  consisting  of  a  central  core  or  fixed 
deposit  of  meaning,  which  renders  it  significant  in  a  certain 
general  way  to  a  number  of  persons,  or  even  to  all  men,  but 
which  is  not  yet  adequately  known  by  me  from  the  stand- 
point of  my  present  forming  purpose.     In  virtue   of  these 
conceptual  characters  it  is  relevant  to  my  purpose,  which  is 
as  yet  general  and  indeterminate ;  but  in  the  nature  of  the 
case  it  cannot  yet  be  known   to  me   as  applicable  to  my 
prospective    concrete    purpose,    as    this   shall   come    to   be 
through  judgment. 

Thus,  if  the  test  of  objectivity  of  import  is  to  be  that  the 
judgment  shall  present  an  object  or  a  fact  which,  as  pre- 
sented, is  socially  current  among  men  and  not  shut  away  in 


320  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

the  individual  intelligence  apart  from  the  possibility  of  social 
verification,  then  the  apparent  nominalism  of  the  objection 
we  are  considering  turns  out  to  be  the  uttermost  extreme  of 
realism.  Such  a  test  amounts  to  a  virtual  affirmation  that 
the  sole  objective  reality  is  the  conceptual,  and  that  the 
"accidents"  of  one's  particular  object  of  sense-perception  are 
the  arbitrary  play  of  private  preference  or  fancy.  At  this 
point,  however,  the  objection  may  shift  its  ground  and  take 
refuge  in  some  such  position  as  the  following:  The  real 
object  is  indeed  the  object  which  the  individual  knows  in 
relation  to  his  particular  purpose,  and  it  is  indeed  impossible 
that  the  individual's  judgment  should  be  limited  in  its  con- 
tent to  coincidence  with  the  conceptual  elements  of  meaning 
which  are  socially  current.  The  building-stone  which  one  has 
judged  precisely  fit  for  a  special  purpose,  the  specimen  which 
the  mineralogist  or  the  botanist  examines  under  his  micro- 
scope, the  tool  whose  peculiarity  of  working  one  has  learned 
to  make  allowance  for  in  use — these  all  are,  of  course, 
highly  individual  objects,  possessing  for  the  person  in  ques- 
tion an  indefinite  number  of  objective  aspects  of  which  no 
other  person  can  possibly  be  conscious  at  the  time.  And, 
more  than  this,  even  though  the  individual  may,  in  his  scru- 
tiny of  the  object,  have  discovered  no  conspicuous  new  quali- 
ties in  it  which  were  not  present  in  the  socially  current 
meaning,  the  object  will  still  possess  an  individuality  making 
it  genuinely  unique  merely  through  its  co-ordination  with 
other  objects  in  the  mechanical  process  of  working  out  the 
purpose  in  hand.  It  is  at  least  an  object  standing  here  at 
just  this  time,  a  tool  cutting  this  particular  piece  of  stone 
and  striking  at  this  instant  with  this  particular  ringing 
sound,  and  these  perhaps  wholly  nonessential  facts  will 
nevertheless  serve  to  individualize  the  object  (if  one  chances 
to  think  of  them)  in  the  sense  of  making  it  such  a  one  as 
no  other  person  knows.    All  this  may  be  granted,  the  objec- 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  321 

tion  may  allow,  and  yet  the  vital  point  remains ;  for  this  is 
not  what  it  was  intended,  even  in  the  first  place,  to  deny. 
The  vital  point  at  issue  is  not  whether  the  object  which  I 
know  is  known  as  I  know  it  by  any  other  person,  but 
whether,  in  the  nature  of  things,  it  is  one  that  can  be  so 
known. 

Herein,  then,  lies  the  difference  between  judgments  of 
fact  and  judgments  of  value.  The  mineralogist  can  train 
his  pupil  to  see  precisely  what  he  himself  sees ;  and  so  like- 
wise in  any  case  of  sense-perception,  the  object,  however 
recondite  may  be  the  qualities  or  features  which  one  may  see 
in  it,  can  nevertheless  be  seen  by  any  other  person  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  way  on  the  single,  more  often  not  insuper- 
ably difficult,  condition  that  the  discoverer  shall  point  these 
out  or  otherwise  prepare  the  other  for  seeing  them.  But 
with  the  ton  of  coal  which  one  may  judge  economically  dis- 
posable for  a  charitable  purpose  the  case  stands  differently, 
since  it  is  not  in  its  visible  or  other  physical  aspects  that  the 
ton  of  coal  is  here  the  subject  of  the  judgment.  It  is  as 
having  been  set  apart  by  oneself  exclusively  for  other  uses 
that  the  ton  of  coal  now  functions  as  an  object  and  now 
possesses  the  character  which  the  economic  judgment  has 
given  it ;  and  the  case  stands  similarly  with  a  contemplated 
act,  of  telling  the  truth  in  a  trying  situation.  The  valuation 
placed  upon  the  commodity  or  upon  the  moral  act  depends 
essentially  upon  psychological  conditions  of  temperament, 
disposition,  mood,  or  whim  into  which  it  would  be  impos- 
sible for  another  person  to  enter,  and  these  depend  upon 
conditions  of  past  training  and  native  endowment  which  can 
never  occur  or  be  combined  in  future  in  precisely  the  same 
way  for  any  other  individual.  In  short,  the  physical  object 
is  describahle  and  can  be  made  socially  current,  though 
doubtless  with  more  or  less  of  difficulty,  if  other  persons 
will  attend  to  it  and  learn  to  see  it  as  I  see  it;  but  the  value 


322  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

of  an  economic  object  or  a  moral  act  depends  upon  my 
desires  and  feelings,  and  therefore  must  remain  a  matter  of 
my  private  appreciation. 

In  answering  this  amended  form  of  the  objection  it  is 
entirely  unnecessary  to  discuss  the  issue  of  fact  which  it  has 
raised  as  to  whether  or  not  complete  description  of  a  physical 
object  or  event  is  a  practical  or  theoretical  possibility.  It  need 
only  be  pointed  out  that  at  best  such  complete  description  can 
only  be  successful  in  its  purpose  on  condition  that  the  individ- 
ual upon  whom  the  experiment  is  tried  be  willing  to  attend 
and  have  the  requisite  "apperceptive  background."  The 
accuracy  with  which  another  person's  knowledge  shall  copy 
the  knowledge  which  I  endeavor  to  impart  to  him  must  mani- 
festly depend  upon  these  two  leading  conditions,  not  to  men- 
tion also  the  measure  of  my  own  pedagogical  and  literary  skill. 
Any  consideration  of  such  a  purely  psychological  problem 
as  is  here  suggested  would  be  entirely  out  of  place  in  a  dis- 
cussion the  purpose  of  which  is  not  that  of  analyzing  the  pro- 
cess of  judgment,  but  that  of  interpreting  its  meaning  aspects. 
Let  us  grant  the  entire  psychological  possibility  of  making 
socially  current  in  the  manner  here  suggested  the  most 
highly  individual  and  concrete  cognition  of  an  object  one 
may  please,  and  let  us  grant,  moreover,  that  this  possibility 
has  been  actually  realized.  This  concurrent  testimony  of 
the  witness  will  doubtless  confirm  one's  impression  of  the 
accuracy  of  the  process  of  observation  and  inference  whereby 
the  knowledge  which  has  been  imparted  was  first  gained, 
but  we  must  deny  that  it  can  do  more  than  this.  For  indeed, 
apart  from  some  independent  self-reliant  conviction  of  the 
objective  validity  of  the  knowledge  in  question,  how  should 
another's  assent  be  taken  as  confirmation  and  not  rather  as 
evidence  of  one's  own  mere  skill  in  suggestion  and  of  the 
other's  susceptibility  thereto?  We  must  deny  that  even  in 
the  improved  form  the  criterion  of  social  currency  is  a  valid 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  323 

one.  In  a  word,  the  social  currency  of  knowledge  to  the 
extent  to  which  it  can  exist  requires  as  its  condition,  and  is 
evidence  of,  the  equal  social  currency  of  certain  interests, 
purposes,  or  points  of  view  for  predication;  and  if  it  be 
possible  to  make  socially  current  an  item  of  concrete  knowl- 
edge, with  all  its  concrete  fulness  of  detail,  then  a  fortiori  it 
must  be  possible  to  make  socially  current  the  concrete  individ- 
ual purpose  with  reference  to  which  this  item  of  knowledge 
first  of  all  took  form.  TSTiether  such  a  thing  be  psychologi- 
cally possible  at  all  the  reader  may  decide;  but  if  it  be 
possible  in  the  sphere  of  knowledge  of  fact,  then  it  must  be 
possible  in  the  sphere  of  valuation.  In  short,  judgment 
in  either  field,  in  definition  of  a  certain  object  or  commodity 
or  moral  act  as,  for  the  agent,  an  objective  fact  possessing 
certain  characters,  involves  the  tacit  assumption  of  social 
verifiability  as  a  matter  of  course ;  but  it  does  not  rest  upon 
this  assumption,  nor  is  this  assumption  the  essence  of  its 
meaning.  To  say  that  my  judgment  is  socially  verifiable, 
that  my  concrete  object  of  perception  or  of  valuation  would 
be  seen  as  I  see  it  by  any  person  in  precisely  my  place,  is 
merely  a  tautological  way  of  formally  announcing  that  / 
have  made  the  judgment  and  have  now  a  definite  object 
which  to  me  has  a  certain  definite  functional  meaning. 

Thus,  instead  of  drawing  a  distinction  between  the 
realms  of  fact  and  value,  as  between  what  is  or  can  be  com- 
mon to  all  intelligent  beings  and  what  must  be  unique  for 
each  individual  one,  we  must  hold  that  the  two  realms  are 
coextensive.  The  socially  current  object  answers  to  a  cer- 
tain general  type  of  conscious  purpose  or  interest  active  in 
the  individual  and  so  to  a  general  habit  of  valuation,  and 
the  concrete  object  to  a  special  determination  of  this  type  of 
purpose  with  reference  to  others  in  the  recognized  working 
system  of  life.  The  agent's  final  attitude,  on  the  conclusion 
of  the  judgment-process,  may  be  expressed  in  either  sort  of 


324  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

judgment — in  a  judgment  of  the  value  of  commodity  or  moral 
purpose,  or  in  a  judgment  of  concrete  fact  setting  forth  the 
"external"  conditions  which  warrant  the  purpose  to  the 
"energetic"  self.  Throughout  the  judgment-process  there 
is  a  correlation  between  the  movement  whereby  the  socially 
current  object  develops  into  the  adapted  means  and  that 
whereby  the  socially  current  type  of  conduct  develops  into 
the  defined  and  valued  purpose.' 

At  this  point,  however,  a  second  general  objection  pre- 
sents itself.  However  individual  the  content  of  my  knowl- 
edge of  physical  fact  may  be,  and  however  irrelevant,  from 
the  logical  point  of  view,  to  my  confidence  in  its  objective 
validity  may  be  the  possibility  of  sharing  it  with  other  per- 
sons, nevertheless  it  refers  to  an  object  which  is  in  some 
sense  permanent,  and  therein  differs  from  my  valuations.  In 
economic  valuation  I  reach  a  definition  of  a  certain  com- 
modity and  am  confirmed  in  it  by  all  the  conditions  that 
enter  into  my  final  survey  of  the  situation.  But  my  desire 
for  the  new  sort  of  consumption  may  fail,  and  so  expose  my 
valuation  to  easy  attack  from  any  new  desire  that  may  arise ; 
or  my  supply  of  the  commodity  in  question  may  be  suddenly 
increased  or  diminished,  and  my  valuation  of  the  unit  quan- 
tity thereby  changed.  Likewise  my  ethical  valuation  may 
have  to  be  reversed  (as  Mr.  Taylor  has  insisted)  by  reason 
of  a  change  of  disposition  or  particular  desire  which  makes 
impossible,  except  in  obedience  to  some  other  and  inclusive 
valuation,  further  adherence  to  it.  And  these  changes  take 
place  without  any  accompanying  sense  of  their  doing  violence 
to  objective  fact  or,  on  the  other  hand,  any  judgment  of  their 

1  The  essential  dependence  of  factual  judgmeut  upon  the  rise  of  economic  and 
ethical  conflict  is  implied  in  the  widely  current  doctrine  of  the  teleological  character 
of  knowledge.  It  is  indeed  nowadays  something  like  a  commonplace  to  say  in  one 
sense  or  another  that  knowledge  is  relative  to  ends,  but  it  is  not  always  recognized  by 
those  who  hold  this  view  that  an  end  never  appears  as  such  in  consciousness  alone. 
The  end  that  guides  in  the  construction  of  factual  knowledge  is  an  end  ia  ethical  or 
economic  conflict  with  some  other  likewise  indeterminate  end  in  the  manner  above 
discussed. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  325 

being  in  the  nature  of  corrections  of  previous  errors  in  valua- 
tion, and  so  more  closely  in  accordance  with  the  truth. 
Moreover,  a  new  valuation,  taking  the  place  of  an  old,  does 
not  supplement  its  predecessor  as  one  set  of  judgments 
about  a  physical  object  may  supplement  another,  made  from 
a  different  point  of  view,  but  does  literally  take  its  place, 
and  this  without  necessarily  condemning  it  as  having  been 
erroneous. 

This  general  objection  rests  upon  a  number  of  fairly 
obvious  misconceptions,  and  its  strength  is  apparent  only. 
In  the  first  place,  the  question  of  the  objectivity  of  any  type 
of  judgment  must  in  the  end,  as  we  have  seen,  reduce  itself  to 
a  question  of  the  judgment's  import  to  the  agent.  How- 
ever the  agent's  valuations  may  shift  from  time  to  time, 
each  several  one  will  be  sanctioned  to  the  agent  by  the 
changed  conditions  exhibited  in  the  inventory  which  the 
agent  takes  at  the  close  of  judgment  which  has  formed  it. 
The  conditions  have  changed,  and  the  valuation  of  the 
earlier  purpose  has  likewise  changed ;  but  the  new  purpose 
is  sanctioned  by  the  new  conditions,  and  the  test  of  the  pre- 
sumed validity  of  the  new  valuation  can  only  be  in  the 
manner  already  discussed^  the  test  of  actual  execution  of 
the  purpose.  In  the  change,  as  the  agent  interprets  the 
situation,  there  is  no  violation  of  the  former  purpose  nor  a 
nearer  approach  to  truth.  Each  valuation  is  true  for  the 
situation  to  which  it  corresponds.  We  are  obviously  not 
here  considering  the  case  of  error.  An  error  in  valuation 
is  evidenced  to  the  agent,  not  by  the  need  of  a  new  valua- 
tion answering  to  changed  conditions,  but  by  the  failure  of 
a  given  valuation  to  make  good  its  promise,  although  to  all 
appearance  conditions  have  remained  unchanged.  If  the 
conditions  have  changed,  then  the  purpose  and  the  condi- 
tions must  be  redetermined,  if  the  expansion  of  the  "ener- 

1  See  above,  pp.  282,  283. 


326  Studies  in  Logical  Theobt 

getic"  self  is  to  continue;  but  the  former  valuation  does  not 
thereby  become  untrue. 

These  brief  remarks  should  suffice  by  way  of  answer,  but 
it  will  serve  advantageously  to  illustrate  our  general  position 
if  we  pursue  the  objection  somewhat  farther.  The  physical 
object  is,  nevertheless,  permanent,  it  will  be  said,  and  this 
surely  distinguishes  it  from  the  object  (now  freely  acknowl- 
edged as  such)  of  the  value-judgment.  To  one  man  gold 
may  be  soluble  in  aqua  regia  and  to  another  worth  so 
many  pence  an  ounce,  but  different  and  individual  as  are 
these  judgments  and  the  standpoints  they  respectively  imply, 
the  gold  is  one,  impartially  admitting  at  the  same  time  of 
both  characterizations.  On  the  other  hand,  one  cannot 
judge  an  act  good  and  bad  at  once.  The  purpose  of  decep- 
tion that  may  be  good  is  one  controlled  and  shaped  by  ideals 
quite  different  from  those  which  permit  deception  of  the  evil 
sort  —  is,  in  truth,  taken  as  a  total  act,  altogether  different 
from  the  purpose  of  deception  which  one  condemns,  and  not, 
like  the  "parcel  of  matter"  in  the  two  judgments  about 
gold,  the  subject  of  both  valuations. 

A  brief  consideration  of  the  meaning  of  this  "parcel  of 
matter"  will  easily  expose  the  weakness  of  the  plea.  In  the 
last  analysis  the  "parcel  of  matter"  must  for  the  agent 
reduce  itself,  let  us  say,  to  certain  controllable  energies  cen- 
tering about  certain  closely  contiguous  points  in  space  and 
capable,  in  their  exercise,  of  setting  free  or  checking  other 
energies  in  the  system  of  nature.  Thus,  put  in  aqtia  regia 
the  gold  will  dissolve,  but  in  the  atmosphere  it  retains  its 
brilliant  color,  and  in  the  photographer's  solution  its  ener- 
gies have  still  a  different  mode  of  manifestation.  And  thus 
it  would  appear  that  the  various  predicates  which  are  applied 
to  "gold"  imply,  each  one,  a  unique  set  of  conditions.  Gold 
is  soluble  in  aqua  regia,  but  not  if  it  is  to  retain  its  yellow 
luster;  which  predicate  is  to  be  true  of  it  depends  upon  the 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  327 

conditions  under  which  the  energies  "resident  in  the  gold" 
are  to  be  set  free,  just  as  the  moral  character  of  an  act 
depends  upon  the  social  conditions  obtaining  at  the  time  of 
its  performance — that  is,  upon  the  ideals  with  reference  to 
which  it  has  been  shaped  in  judgment.  How  can  one 
maintain  that  in  a  literal  and  concrete  physical  sense  gold 
in  process  of  solution  is  the  "same"  as  gold  entering  into 
chemical  combination?  Surely  the  energy  conditions  which 
constitute  the  "gold"  in  the  two  processes  are  not  the 
same  —  and  can  one  nowadays  hope  to  find  sameness  in 
unchangeable  atoms?' 

In  a  word,  the  permanent  substance  or  "real  essence" 
that  admits  of  various  mutually  supplementary  determina- 
tions corresponding  to  diverse  points  of  view  is,  strictly 
speaking,  a  convenient  abstraction,  and  not  an  existent  fact 
in  time — and  we  shall  maintain  that  the  same  species  of 
abstraction  has  its  proper  place,  and  in  fact  occurs,  in  the 
sphere  of  moral  judgment.  The  type  of  moral  conduct  that 
in  every  actual  case  of  its  occurrence  in  the  moral  order  is 
determined  in  some  unique  and  special  way  by  relation  to 
other  standards  is  precisely  analogous  to  the  "  substance " 
that  is  now  dissolved  in  aqua  regia  and  now  made  to  pass  in 
the  form  of  current  coin,  but  cannot  be  treated  in  both  ways 
at  once.  Both  are  abstractions.  The  "gold"  is  a  name  for 
the  general  possibility  of  attaining  any  one  of  a  certain 
set  of  particular  ends  by  appropriately  co-ordinating  cer- 
tain energies,  resident  elsewhere  in  the  physical  system, 
with  those  at  present  stored  in  this  particular  "parcel  of 
matter;"  the  result  to  be  attained  depends  not  alone  upon 
the  "parcel  of  matter,"  but  also  upon  the  particular  energies 
brought  to  bear  upon  it  from  without.  Now  let  us  take  a 
type  of  conduct  which  is  sometimes  judged  good  and  some- 
times bad      Deception,  for  example,  is  such  a  type — and 

'  Cf.  ScHiLLEE,  Riddles  of  the  Sphinx,  chap,  vii,  §§  10-14, 


328  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

as  a  type  it  simply  stands  for  the  general  possibility  of 
furtherance  or  detriment  to  the  "energetic"  self  according 
as  it  is  determined  in  the  concrete  instance  by  ideals  of 
social  well-being  or  by  considerations  of  immediate  personal 
advantage. 

For  the  type-form  of  conduct — when  considered,  not  as 
a  type  of  mere  physical  performance,  but  as  conduct  in  the 
technical  sense  of  a  possible  purpose  of  the  self  —  is,  in 
the  sense  we  have  explained,  a  symbol  for  the  general  pos- 
sibility of  access  or  dissipation  of  spiritual  energy — energy 
which  must  be  set  free  by  the  bringing  to  bear  of  other 
energies  upon  it,  and  which  furthers  or  works  counter  to  the 
enlargement  and  development  of  the  self  according  to  the 
mode  of  its  co-ordination  with  other  energies  which  the  self 
has  already  turned  to  its  purposes/  But  actual  conduct  is 
concrete  always  and  never  typical ;  and  so  likewise,  we  have 
sought  to  show,  actual  "substance,"  the  objective  thing 
referred  to  in  the  factual  judgment,  is  always  concrete  and 
never  an  essence.  It  is  not  a  fixed  thing  admitting  of  a  simul- 
taneous variety  of  conflicting  determinations  and  practical 
uses,  but  absolutely  unique  and  already  determined  to  its 
unique  character  by  the  whole  assemblage  of  physical  con- 
ditions which  affect  it  at  the  time  and  which  it  in  turn 
reacts  upon.  In  the  moral  as  in  the  physical  sphere  the 
fundamental  category  would,  on  olir  present  account,  appear 
to  be  that  of  energy.  The  particular  physical  object  given 
in  judgment  is  a  concrete  realization,  in  the  form  of  a  par- 
ticular means  or  instrument,  of  that  general  possibility  of 
attaining  ends  which  the  concept  of  a  fixed  fund  of  energy, 
interpreted  as  a  logical  postulate  or  principle  of  inference, 
expresses.  The  particular  moral  or  economic  act  is  a  par- 
ticular way  in  which  the  energy  of  the  self  may  be  increased 

1  It  would  appear  that  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy  is  valid  only 
in  the  physical  sphere;  but  the  logical  significance  of  this  limitation  cannot  be 
here  discussed. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  329 

or  diminished.  In  both  spheres  the  reality  presented  in  the 
finished  judgment  is  objective  as  being  a  stimulus  to  the 
setting  free  of  the  energies  for  which  it  stands.  Once 
more,  then,  our  answer  to  the  objection  we  have  been  con- 
sidering must  be  that  the  object  as  the  permanent  sub- 
strate is  merely  an  abstract  symbol  standing  for  the  inde- 
terminate means  in  general  set  over  against  the  self.  Cor- 
responding to  it  we  have,  on  the  other  side,  the  concept  of 
the  "energetic"  self — the  self  that  is  purposive  in  gen- 
eral, expansive  somehow  or  other. 

The  function  of  completed  factual  judgment  in  the 
development  of  experience  is,  we  have  held,  that  of  warrant- 
ing to  the  agent  the  completed  purpose  which  his  judgment 
of  value  expresses.  This  view  calls  for  some  further  comment 
and  illustration  in  closing  the  present  division.  In  the  first 
place  the  statement  implies  that  the  conditions  which  factual 
judgment  presents  in  the  "final  survey"  as  sanctioning  the 
purpose  have  not  determined  the  purpose,  since  prior  to  the 
determination  of  the  purpose  the  conditions  were  not,  and 
could  not  be,  so  presented.  The  question,  therefore,  natur- 
ally arises  whether  our  meaning  is  that  in  the  formation  of 
our  purposes  in  valuation  the  recognition  of  existing  con- 
ditions plays  no  part.  Our  answer  can  be  indicated  only  in 
the  barest  outline  as  follows: 

The  agent  must,  of  course,  in  an  economic  judgment-pro- 
cess, recognize  and  take  account  of  such  facts  as  the  tech- 
nical adaptability  of  the  means  he  is  proposing  to  use  to  the 
new  purpose  that  is  forming,  as  also  of  environing  con- 
ditions which  may  affect  the  success  which  he  may  meet 
with  in  applying  them.  He  must  consider  also  his  own 
physical  strength  and  qualities  of  mind  with  a  view  to  this 
same  technical  problem.  And  similarly  in  ethical  valuation, 
as  we  have  seen,   the  psychology  of  the  "empirical  ego" 


330  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

must  play  its  part.  But  the  conditions  thus  recognized  are, 
as  we  might  seek  to  show  more  in  detail,  explainable  as  the 
outcome  of  past  factual  judgment-processes,  and  on  the 
occasion  of  their  original  definition  in  the  form  in  which 
they  now  are  known  played  the  sanctioning  part  of  which 
we  have  so  often  spoken.  They  therefore  correspond  to  the 
agent's  accepted  practical  ideals,  so  that  the  control  which 
his  past  experience  exercises  over  his  present  conduct  may 
be  stated  equally  well  in  either  sort  of  terms — in  terms  of 
his  prevailing  recognized  standards,  or  in  terms  of  his 
present  knowledge  of  the  conditions  which  his  new  purpose 
must  respect.  Thus,  in  general,  the  concept  of  a  physical 
order  conditioning  the  conduct  of  all  men  and  presented  in  a 
definite  body  of  socially  current  knowledge  is  the  logical 
correlate  of  the  moral  law  conceived  as  a  categorical  imper- 
ative prescribing  certain  types  of  conduct. 

Thus  the  error  of  regarding  the  agent's  conduct  in  a 
present  emergency  as  an  outcome  of  existing  determining 
conditions  is  logically  identical  with  the  corresponding  error 
of  the  ethical  theory  of  self-realization.  The  latter  holds 
the  logical  possibility  of  a  determinate  descriptive  ideal 
(already  realized  in  the  unchanging  Absolute  Self)  which  is 
adequate  to  the  solution  of  all  possible  ethical  problems. 
The  former  holds  that  all  conduct  must  be  subject  to  the 
determining  force  of  external  conditions  which,  if  not  at 
present  completely  known,  are  at  least  in  theory  knowable. 
The  physical  universe  in  its  original  nebulous  state  con- 
tained the  "promise  and  potency  "of  all  that  has  been  in  the 
way  of  human  conduct  and  of  all  that  is  to  be.  Into  the 
fixed  mechanical  system  no  new  energy  can  enter  and  from 
it  none  of  the  original  fund  of  energy  can  be  lost.  This 
mechanical  theory  of  conduct  is  the  essential  basis  of  the 
hedonistic  theory  of  ethics;  and  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to   show    that    Green's    criticism   of    this    latter   and    his 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  331 

own  affirmative  theory  of  the  moral  ideal  (as  also  the  cur- 
rent conventional  criticism  of  hedonism  in  the  same  tenor 
by  the  school  of  Green)  are  in  a  logical  sense  identical 
with  it.  For  the  assumption  that  conduct  is  determined 
by  existing  objective  conditions  is  precisely  the  logical  cor- 
relate of  the  concept  of  a  contentual  and  "realizable"  ideal 
moral  self.^ 

We  may  now  interpret,  in  the  light  of  our  general  view 
of  the  function  of  factual  judgment,  the  concept  of  the 
"empirical  self"  referred  to  in  our  discussion  of  the  various 
types  of  sanctioning  condition  which  may  enter  into  the 
"final  survey."  The  "empirical  self"  of  psychological  sci- 
ence is  a  construction  gradually  put  together  by  psycholo- 
gist or  introspective  layman  as  an  interpretation  of  the  way 
in  which  accepted  concrete  modes  of  conduct,  in  the  deter- 
mination of  which  standards  have  been  operative,  have 
worked  out  in  practice  to  the  furtherance  or  impoverishment 
of  the  "energetic"  self.  We  have  seen  that  the  ambiguous 
presented  self  which  functions  in  the  moral  attitude  of  obe- 
dience to  authority  or  to  conscience  gives  place  in  the  atti- 
tude of  conscious  valuation  to  apprehension  of  the  "energetic" 
self,  on  the  one  hand,  and  descriptive  concepts  of  particular 
types  of  conduct,  on  the  other.  The  "empirical  self"  at  the 
same  time  makes  its  appearance  as  a  constantly  expanding 
inventory  of  the  "spiritual  resources"  which  the  "energetic" 
self  has  at  its  disposal.  These  are  the  functions  of  the  soul 
which  a  functional  psychology  shows  us  in  operation — powers 
of  attention,  strength  of  memory,  fertility  in  associative 
recall,  and  the  like — and  these  are  the  resources  where- 
with the  "energetic"  self  may  execute,  and  so  exploit  to  its 

1  That  the  assumption  mentioned  is  the  essential  basis  of  the  twin  theories  of 
associationism  in  psychology  and  hedonism  in  ethics  is  shown  by  Dr.  Warner  Fite 
in  his  article,  "The  Associational  Conception  of  Experience,"  Philosophical  Review, 
Vol.  IX,  pp.  283  fif.  Cf.  Mr.  Bradley's  remarks  on  the  logic  of  hedonism  in  his 
Principles  of  Logic,  pp.  244-9. 


332  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

own    furtherance,  the  purposes  which,  in  particular  emer- 
gencies, new  end  and  recognized  standards  may  work  out 

in  co-operation.* 

VI 

In  the  foregoing  pages  we  have  consistently  used  the 
expressions  "ethical  and  economic  judgment"  and  "judg- 
ment of  valuation"  as  synonymous.  This  may  have  seemed 
to  the  reader  something  very  like  a  begging  of  the  question 
from  the  outset,  as  taking  for  granted  that  very  judgmental 
character  of  our  valuational  experience  which  it  was  the 
professed  object  of  our  discussion  to  establish.  We  are  thus 
called  upon  very  briefly  to  consider,  first  of  all,  the  relations 
which  subsist  between  the  consciousness  of  value  and  the 
process  which  we  have  described  as  that  of  valuation.  This 
will  enable  us,  in  the  second  place,  to  determine  the  logical 
function  which  belongs  to  the  consciousness  of  value  in  the 
general  economy  of  life.  The  consciousness  of  value  is  a 
perfectly  definite  and  distinctive  psychical  fact  mediated  by 
a  doubtless  highly  complex  set  of  psychical  or  ultimately 
physiological  conditions.  As  such  it  admits  of  descriptive 
analysis,  and  in  a  complete  theory  of  value  such  descriptive 
analysis  should  certainly  find  a  place.      It  would  doubtless 

1  The  "  energetic  "  self  is  apparently  Me.  Bradlet's  fourth  "  meaning  of  self," 
the  self  as  monad  —  "something  moving  parallel  with  the  life  of  a  man,  or,  rather, 
something  not  moving,  but  literally  standing  in  relation  to  his  successive  variety  " 
(Appearance  and  Reality  [1st  ed.]  p.  86,  in  chap,  ix,  "The  Meanings  of  the  Self"). 
Mr.  Bradley's  difBculty  appears  to  come  from  his  desiring  a  psychological  content  for 
what  is  essentially  a  logical  conception  —  a  confusion  (if  we  may  be  permitted  the 
remark)  which  runs  through  the  entire  chapter  to  which  we  refer  and  is  responsible 
for  the  undeniable  and  hopeless  incohercncy  of  the  various  meanings  of  the  self,  as 
Mr.  Bradley  therein  expounds  them.  "  If  the  monad  stands  aloof,"  says  Mr.  Bradley, 
"either  with  no  character  at  all  or  a  private  character  apart,  then  it  may  be  a  fine 
thing  in  itself,  but  it  is  a  mere  mockery  to  call  it  the  self  of  a  man  "  (p.  87).  Surely 
this  is  to  misconstrue  and  then  find  fault  with  that  very  character  of  essential  logical 
apartness  from  any  possibility  of  determination  in  point  of  descriptive  psychological 
content  which  constitutes  the  whole  value  of  the  "energetic"  self  as  a  logical  con- 
ception stimulative  of  the  valuation-process  and  so  inevitably  of  factual  judgment. 
See  pp.  258,  259,  above.  The  reader  may  find  for  himself  in  Mr.  Bradley's  enumera- 
tion of  meanings  our  concept  of  the  empirical  self.  But  surely  the  "  energetic  "  and 
empirical  selves  would  appear  on  our  showing  to  have  no  necessary  couflict  with 
each  other. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  333 

throw  much  light  upon  the  origin  of  valuation  as  a  process, 
and  of  valuing  as  an  attitude,  and  admirably  illustrate  the 
view  of  the  function  of  the  consciousness  of  value  to  which 
a  logical  study  of  valuation  as  a  process  seems  to  lead  us. 
This  problem  in  analysis  belongs,  however,  to  psychology, 
and  therefore  lies  apart  from  our  present  purpose  ;  nor  is  it 
necessary  to  the  establishment  of  our  present  view  to  under- 
take it.  It  is  necessary  for  our  purpose  only  to  suggest,  for 
purposes  of  identification,  a  brief  description  of  the  value- 
consciousness,  and  to  indicate  its  place  in  the  process  of 
reflective  thought. 

The  consciousness  of  value  may  best  be  described,  by 
way  of  first  approximation,  in  the  language  of  the  Austrian 
economists  as  a  sense  of  the  "importance"  to  oneself  of  a 
commodity  or  defined  moral  purpose.  It  belongs  to  the 
agent's  attitude  of  survey  or  recapitulation  which  ensues 
upon  the  completion  of  the  judgment-process  and  is  mediated 
by  attention  to  the  ethical  or  economic  object  in  its  newly 
defined  character  of  specific  conduciveness  to  the  well-being 
of  the  self.  The  commodity,  in  virtue  of  its  ascertained 
physical  properties,  is  adapted  to  certain  modes  of  use  or 
consumption  which,  through  valuation  of  the  commodity, 
have  come  to  be  accepted  as  desirable.  The  moral  act 
likewise  has  been  approved  by  virtue  of  its  having  certain 
definite  sociological  tendencies,  or  being  conducive  to  the 
welfare  and  happiness  of  a  friend.  Thus  commodity  or 
moral  act,  as  the  case  may  be,  has  a  determinate  complexity 
of  meaning  which  has  been  judged  as,  in  one  sense,  expan- 
sive of  the  self,  and  the  value-consciousness  we  may  identify 
as  that  sense  of  the  valued  object's  importance  which  is 
mediated  by  recognition  of  it  as  the  bearer  of  this  complexity 
of  concrete  meaning.  The  meaning  is,  as  we  may  say, 
"condensed"  or  "compacted"  into  the  object  as  given  in 
sense-perception,  and  because  the  meaning  stands  for  ex- 


334  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

pansion  of  the  self,  the  object  in  taking  it  up  into  itself 
receives  the  character  of  importance  as  a  valued  object. 

The  sense  of  importance  thus  is  expressive  of  an  attitude 
upon  the  agent's  part.  The  concrete  meanings  which  make 
up  the  content  of  the  object's  importance  would  inevitably, 
if  left  to  themselves,  prompt  overt  action.  The  commodity 
would  forthwith  be  applied  to  its  new  use  or  the  moral  act 
would  be  performed.  The  self  would,  as  we  may  express  it, 
possess  itself  of  the  spiritual  energies  resident  in  the  chosen 
purpose.  The  attitude  of  survey,  however,  inhibits  this  action 
of  the  self  and  the  sense  of  importance  is  the  resulting  emo- 
tional apprehension  of  the  value  of  the  object  hereby  brought 
to  recognition.  Now,  it  should  be  carefully  observed  that  the 
particular  concrete  emotions  appropriate  to  the  details  of 
the  valued  purpose  are  not  what  we  here  intend.  The  pur- 
pose may  spring  from  some  impulse  of  self-interest,  hatred, 
patriotism,  or  love,  and  the  psychical  material  of  its  pres- 
entation during  the  agent's  survey  will  be  the  varied  complex 
"of  qualitative  emotion  that  comes  from  inhibition  of  the 
detailed  activities  which  make  up  the  purpose  as  a  whole. 
So  also  the  apprehension  of  the  physical  object  of  economic 
valuation  is  largely,  if  not  altogether,  emotional  in  its  psychi- 
cal constitution.  Psychologically  these  emotions  are  the 
purpose -.-they  are  the  "stuff"  of  which  the  purpose  as  a 
psychical  fact  occurring  in  time  is  made.  But  we  must  bear 
in  mind  that  it  is  not  the  purpose  as  a  psychical  fact  that  is 
the  object  of  the  agent's  valuing  —  any  more  than  is  the  tool 
with  which  one  cuts  perceived  as  a  molecular  mass  or  as  an 
aggregation  of  centers  of  ether-stress.  As  a  cognized  object  of 
value  the  purpose  is,  in  our  schematic  terminology,  a  source  of 
energy  for  the  increase  of  the  self,  and  thus  the  conscious- 
ness of  value  is  the  perfectly  specific  emotion  arising  from 
restraint  put  upon  the  self  in  its  movement  of  appropriation 
of  this  energy.    In  contrast  with  the  concrete  emotions  which 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  385 

are  the  substance  of  the  purpose  as  presented,  the  conscious- 
ness of  value  may  be  called  a  "  formal ' '  emotion  or  the  emotion 
of  a  typical  reflective  attitude. 

The  valuing  attitude  we  may  then  describe  as  that  of 
"resolution"  on  the  part  of  the  self  to  adhere  to  the  finished 
purpose  which  it  now  surveys,  with  a  view  to  exploitation  of 
the  purpose.  The  connection  between  the  valuation -pro- 
cess and  the  consciousness  of  value  may  be  stated  thus:  The 
valuation- process  works  out  (and  necessarily  in  cognitive, 
objective  terms)  the  purpose  which  is  valued  in  the  agent's 
survey.  But  this  development  of  the  purpose  is  at  the  same 
time  determination  of  the  "energetic"  self  to  acceptance  of 
the  purpose  that  shall  be  worked  out.  Thus  the  valuation- 
process  is  the  source  of  the  consciousness  of  value  in  the 
twofold  way  (1)  of  defining  the  object  valued,  and  (2)  of 
determining  the  self  to  the  attitude  of  resolution  to  adhere 
to  it  and  exploit  it.'  The  consciousness  of  value  is  the  appre- 
hension of  an  object  in  its  complete  functional  character  as 
a  factor  in  experience. 

The  function  of  the  consciousness  of  value  must  now  be 
very  briefly  considered.  The  phenomenon  is  a  striking  one, 
and  apparently,  as  the  economists  especially  have  insisted,  of 
much  practical  importance  in  the  conduct  of  life.^  And  yet  on 
our  account  of  the  phenomenon,  as  it  may  appear,  the  prob- 
lem of  assigning  to  it  a  function  must  be,  to  say  the  least, 
difficult.  For  the  consciousness  of  value  is,  we  have  held, 
emotional,  and,  on  the  conception  of  emotion  in  general  which 
we  have  taken  for  granted  throughout  our  present  discussion, 
this  mode  of  being  conscious  is  merely  a  reflex  of  a  state  of 
tension  in  activity.  As  such  it  merely  reports  in  conscious- 
ness a  process  of  motor  co-ordination  already  going  on  and  in 
the  nature  of  the  case  can  contribute  nothing  to  the  outcome. 

1  In  the  first  of  these  inseparable  aspects  valuation  is  determinative  of  Right- 
ness  and  Wrongness ;  in  the  second  it  presents  the  object  as  Good  or  Bad.  See  p.  259, 
above. 

2  See,  for  example,  Wiesee,  Natural  Value  (Eng.  trans.) ,  p.  17. 


336  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

Now  if  it  were  in  a  direct  way  as  immediately  felt  emotion 
that  the  consciousness  of  value  must  be  functional  if  func- 
tional at  all,  then  the  problem  might  well  be  given  up;  but 
it  would  be  a  serious  blunder  to  conceive  the  problem  in 
this  strictly  psychological  way.  A  logical  statement  of  the 
problem  would  raise  a  difPerent  issue — not  the  question  of 
whether  emotion  as  emotion  can  in  any  sense  be  functional 
in  experience,  but  whether  the  consciousness  of  value  and 
emotion  in  general  may  not  receive  reflective  interpretation 
and  thereby,  becoming  objective,  play  a  part  as  a  factor  in 
subsequent  valuation- processes.  Indeed,  the  psychological 
statement  of  the  problem  misses  the  entire  point  at  issue 
and  leads  directly  to  the  wholly  irrelevant  general  problem  of 
whether  any  mode  of  consciousness  whatever  can,  as  con- 
sciousness, put  forth  energy  and  be  a  factor  in  controlling 
conduct.  The  present  problem  is  properly  a  logical  one. 
What  is  the  agent's  apprehension  of  the  matter?  In  his 
subsequent  reflective  processes  of  valuation  does  the  con- 
sciousness of  value,  which  was  a  feature  of  the  survey  on  a 
past  occasion,  receive  recognition  in  any  way  and  so  play  a 
part?  This  is  simply  a  question  of  fact  and  clearly,  as  a 
question  relating  to  the  logical  content  of  the  agent's  re- 
flective process,  has  no  connection  with  or  interest  in  the 
problem  of  a  possible  dynamic  efficacy  of  consciousness  as 
such.  The  question  properly  is  logical,  not  psychological  or 
metaphysical. 

Thus  stated,  then,  the  problem  seems  to  admit  of  answer 
— and  along  the  line  already  suggested  in  our  account  of 
economic  valuation.'  Recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  value  was  experienced  in  the  survey  of  a  certain 
purpose  on  an  earlier  occasion  confirms  this  purpose,  holding 
the  means,  in  an  economic  situation,  to  their  appointed  use 
and  strengthening  adherence  to  the  standard  in  the  ethical 

1  See  pp.  307-12  above. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  337 

case.  This  recognition  serves  as  stimulus  to  a  reproduction, 
in  memory,  of  the  cognitive  details  of  the  earlier  survey, 
and  so  in  the  ideal  case  to  a  more  or  less  complete  and 
recognizably  adequate  reinstatement  of  the  earlier  valuing 
attitude,  and  so  to  a  reinstatement  of  the  consciousness  of 
value  itself.  The  result  is  a  strengthening  of  the  established 
valuation,  a  more  efficacious  control  of  the  new  end  claiming 
recognition,  and  an  assured  measure  of  continuity  of  ethical 
development  from  the  old  valuation  to  the  new.  The  function 
thus  assigned  to  the  consciousness  of  value  finds  abundant 
illustration  elsewhere  in  the  field  of  emotion.  The  stated 
festivals  of  antiquity  commemorative  of  regularly  recurrent 
phases  of  agricultural  and  pastoral  life,  as  also  the  festivals 
in  observance  of  signal  events  in  the  private  and  political 
life  of  the  individual,  would  appear  to  find,  more  or  less  dis- 
tinctly, here  their  explanation.  These  festivals  must  have 
been  prompted  by  a  more  or  less  conscious  recognition  of  the 
social  value  inherent  in  the  important  functions  making  up 
the  life  of  the  community,  and  of  the  individual  citizen  as  a 
member  of  the  community  and  as  an  individual.  They 
secured  the  end  of  a  sustained  and  enhanced  interest  in 
these  normal  functions  by  effecting,  through  a  symbolic 
reproduction  of  these,  an  intensified  and  glorified  experience 
of  the  emotional  meaning  normally  and  inherently  belonging 
to  them.'  In  the  same  way  the  rites  of  the  religious  cults  of 
Greece,  not  to  mention  kindred  phenomena  so  abundantly  to 
be  found  in  lower  civilizations  as  well  as  in  our  own,  served 
to  fortify  the  individual  in  a  certain  consistent  and  salutary 
course  of  institutional  and  private  life." 

J  The  illustration,  as  also  the  general  principle  which  it  hero  is  used  to  illus- 
trate, was  suggested  some  years  since  by  Professor  G.  li.  Mead  in  a  lecture  course  on 
the  "  History  of  Psychology,"  which  the  writer  had  the  advantage  of  attending. 

2  The  conservative  function  of  valuation  may  be  further  illustrated  by  reference 
to  the  well-known  principle  of  marginal  utility  of  which  wo  have  already  made  men- 
tion (p.  307  above),  and  which  has  played  so  great  a  part  in  modern  economic 
theory.    The  value  of  the  unit  quantity  of  a  stock  of  any  commodity  is,  according  to 


338  Studies  in  Logical  Theory 

It  has  been  taken  for  granted  throughout  that  there  are 
but  two  forms  of  valuation -process,  the  ethical  and  the  eco- 
nomic. The  reason  for  this  limitation  may  already  be  suffi- 
ciently apparent,  but  it  will  further  illustrate  our  general 
conception  of  the  valuation -process  briefly  to  indicate  it  in 
detail.  What  shall  be  said,  for  example,  of  the  common  use 
of  the  term  "value"  in  such  expressions  as  the  "value  of 
life,"  the  "emotional  value"  of  an  object  or  a  moral  act,  the 
"natural  value"  of  a  type  of  impulsive  activity?  In  these 
uses  of  the  word  the  reference  is  apparently  to  one's  own 
incommunicable  inner  experience  of  living,  of  perception  of 
the  object,  or  of  the  impulse,  which  cannot  be  suggested  to 
any  other  person  who  has  not  himself  had  the  experience. 
My  pleasure,  my  color-sensation  in  its  affective  aspect,  my 
emotion,  are  inner  and  subjective,  and  I  distinguish  them  by 
such  expressions  as  the  above  from  the  visible,  tangible  object 
to  which  I  ascribe  them  as  constituting  its  immediate  or 
natural  value  to  me.  This  broader  use  of  the  term  "value" 
has  not  found  recognition  in  the  foregoing  pages,  and  it 
requires  here  a  word  of  comment.  So  long  as  these  phases 
of  the  experience  of  the  object  are  not  recognized  as  separable 
in  thought  from  the  object  viewed  as  an  external  condition 
or  means,  they  would  apparently  be  better  characterized  in 
some  other  way.  If,  however,  they  are  so  recognized,  and  are 
thereby  taken  as  determinative  of  the  agent's  practical  atti- 
tude toward  the  thing,  we  have  merely  our  typical  situation 
of  ethical  valuation  of  some  implied  purpose  as  conducive  to 
the  self  and  economic  valuation  of  the  means  as  requisites  for 

this  principle,  measured  by  the  least  important  single  use  in  the  schedule  of  uses  to 
which  the  stock  as  a  whole  is  to  be  applied.  Manifestly,  then,  adherence  to  this 
valuation  placed  upon  the  unit  quantity  is  in  so  far  conservative  of  the  whole  sched- 
ule and  the  marginal  value  is  a  "  short-hand  "  symbol  expressive  of  the  value  of  the 
whole  complex  purpose  presented  in  the  schedule.  Moreover,  the  increase  of  mar- 
ginal valuo  concurrently  with  diminution  of  the  stock  through  consumption,  loss, 
or  reapplication  is  not  indicative  so  much  of  a  change  of  purpose  as  of  determina- 
tion to  adhere  to  so  much  of  the  original  program  of  consumption  as  may  still  bo 
possible  of  attainment  with  the  depleted  supply  of  the  commodity. 


Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  339 

execution  of  the  purpose.  Our  general  criterion  for  the  pro- 
priety of  terming  any  mode  of  consciousness  the  value  of  an 
object  must  be  that  it  shall  perform  a  logical  function  and 
not  simply  be  referred  to  in  its  aspect  of  psychical  fact. 
The  feeling  or  emotion,  or  whatever  the  mode  of  conscious- 
ness in  question  may  be,  must  play  the  recognized  part,  in 
the  agent's  survey  of  the  situation,  of  prompting  and  sup- 
porting a  definite  practical  attitude  with  reference  to  the 
object.  If,  in  short,  the  experience  in  question  enters  in 
any  way  into  a  conscious  purpose  of  the  agent,  it  may  properly 
be  termed  a  value.' 

Esthetic  value  also  has  not  been  recognized,  and  for  the 
opposite  reason.  The  sense  of  beauty  would  appear  to  be  a 
correlate  of  relatively  perfect  attained  adjustment  between 
the  agent  and  his  natural  environment  or  the  conditions  sug- 
gested more  or  less  impressively  by  the  work  of  art.  There 
must,  indeed,  be  present  in  the  eesthetic  experience  an  element 
of  unsatisfied  curiosity  sufficient  to  stimulate  an  interest  in 
the  changing  or  diverse  aspects  of  the  beautiful  object,  but 
this  must  not  be  sufficient  to  prompt  reflective  judgment  of 
the  details  presented.  On  the  whole,  the  aesthetic  experience 
would  appear  to  be  essentially  post-judgmental  and  appre- 
ciative. It  comes  on  the  particular  occasion,  not  as  the 
result  of  a  judgment-process  of  the  valuational  type,  but  as  an 
immediate  appreciation.  As  an  immediate  appreciation  it 
has  no  logical  function  and  on  our  principles  must  be  denied 
the  name  of  value.  Our  standpoint  must  be  that  of  the 
experiencing  individual.  The  aesthetic  experience  as  a  type 
may  well  be  a  development  out  of  the  artistic  and  so  find 

1  Thus  except  on  this  condition  we  should  deny  the  propriety  of  speaking  of  the 
value  of  a  friend  or  of  a  memento  or  sacred  relic.  The  purpose  of  accurate  definition 
of  the  function  of  such  objects  as  these  in  the  attainment  of  one's  ends  is  foreign  to 
the  proper  attitude  of  loving,  prizing,  or  venerating  them.  We  may  ethically  value 
the  act  of  sacrifice  for  a  friend  or  of  solicitous  care  of  the  memento,but  the  object  of 
our  sacrifice  or  solicitude  has  simply  the  direct  or  immediate  "qualitative  "emotional 
character  appropriate  to  the  kinds  of  activity  to  which  it  is  the  adequate  stimulus. 


340  Studies  in  Logical  Theoey 

its  ultimate  explanation  in  the  psychology  of  man's 
primitive  technological  occupations  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
life.  It  is,  as  we  have  said,  of  the  post- judgmental  type, 
and  so  may  very  probably  be  but  the  cumulative  outcome 
of  closer  and  closer  approximations  along  certain  lines  to  a 
perfected  adjustment  with  the  conditions  of  life.  It  may 
thus  have  its  origin  in  past  processes  of  the  reflective  valua- 
tional  type.  Nevertheless,  viewed  in  the  light  of  its  actual 
present  character  and  status  in  experience,  the  aesthetic  must 
be  excluded  from  the  sphere  of  values. 

Thus  the  realms  of  fact  and  value  are  both  real,  but  that 
of  value  is  logically  prior  and  so  the  "more  real."  The 
realm  of  fact  is  that  of  conditions  warranting  the  purposes  of 
the  self;  as  a  separate  order,  complete  and  absolute  in 
itself,  it  is  an  abstraction  that  has  forgotten  the  reason  for 
which  it  was  made.  Reality  in  the  logical  sense  is  that 
which  furthers  the  development  of  the  self.  The  purpose 
that  falls  short  of  its  promise  in  this  regard  is  unreal — not, 
indeed,  in  the  psychological  sense  that  it  never  existed  in 
imagination,  but  in  the  logical  sense  that  it  is  no  longer 
valued.  Within  the  inclusive  realm  of  reality  the  realm  of 
fact  is  that  of  the  means  which  serve  the  concrete  purposes 
which  the  self  accepts.  The  completed  purpose,  however, 
is  not  means,  since  still  behind  and  beyond  it  there  can  be 
no  other  concrete  valued  purpose  which  it  can  serve.  Nor 
is  it  an  ultimate  end,  since  in  its  character  of  accepted  and 
valued  end  the  self  adheres  to  it,  and  it  therefore  cannot 
express  the  ivkole  purpose  of  the  self  to  whose  unspecifiable 
fulness  and  increase  of  activity  it  is  but  a  temporary  proba- 
tional  contributor.  It  is  rather  in  the  nature  of  a  for- 
mula or  method  of  behavior  to  which  the  self  ascribes  reality 
by  recognizing  and  accepting  it  as  its  own. 


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SEP  23  1933 


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